(A version of this ran as an official Advocate/Times-Picayune editorial on June 15)
Perhaps no state in the union faces as many and varied water-related issues as Louisiana does, and now its ability to cope with them is under multi-faceted threats from the Trump administration. Louisiana’s congressional delegation should flex its muscle to change the president’s mind.
Especially galling, but what should be especially easy to fix, is the administration’s halting of a $25 million Corps of Engineers study on the future of the lower Mississippi River. Not only is the study of great importance, but it actually is likely to save far more money in the long run than its relatively paltry five-year costs.
This pound-foolish pause in funds comes amidst three other cuts that could hit Louisiana particularly hard, namely those to the National Weather Service, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Those cuts should draw pushback from Louisiana’s representatives and senators, but the cessation of the river study should draw special attention.
The Lower Mississippi Comprehensive Management Study actually covers Mississippi River issues in seven states, but the Louisiana issues surely are the most complex. At one and the same time, Louisianans need the river to be deep enough to accommodate container vessels for our ports; strong enough in its main flow to counteract saltwater intrusion that threatens drinking water, drainage, and machinery; and contained enough to avoid disastrous floods, but free enough to deposit sediment outside its banks in some places so as to replenish eroding wetlands.
The five-year study announced in 2023 was supposed to work in complementary fashion with a related but separate $22 million study sponsored by the National Academies of Sciences.
“This funding represented a legal authorization for the Corps to think about how to manage the river for the next 100 years,” said Sam Bentley, an LSU geologist co-leading the National Academy study. Some of the issues it intends to address for a century, though, already are urgent now, as shown by three straight years of saltwater wedges moving upriver, not to mention the ongoing loss of wetlands starved of river sediment for nearly 100 years because of (necessary) man-made levees.
The responsibility for handling almost every aspect of these challenges lies with the Corps. For dredging alone from Baton Rouge to the Gulf, the Corps spent $228 million in fiscal year 2024. The $25 million (spread over five years) for the study is comparative child’s play. And it’s prophylactic: The information from the study should help the Corps and other policymakers ward off terrible damage before it happens, which is a lot less expensive than handling unexpected crises or recovering from them. The study, in short, should more than pay for itself.
Louisiana’s Mike Johnson and Steve Scalise are the Speaker and the House Majority Leader, respectively. With a single phone call to the president, they should be able to get the decision reversed and the study’s funding re-started. The case in the study’s favor is just that obvious.[END]
[The original editorial is at this link.]
