In an effort to rebuild the state’s natural infrastructure, Congress passed the 1990 Coastal Wetlands Planning, Protection, and Restoration Act, sponsored by Senator John Breaux (D–LA). The Breaux Act provides about $50 million each year for wetlands restoration projects in Louisiana. The Breaux Act has provided funding for 118 restoration projects, and 75 projects have already been built. But most of these projects are relatively small in scale.
In 1996, the state of Louisiana and a group of federal agencies joined with parish officials and the public to create a consensus document. The result, after 65 public meetings over 18 months, was Coast 2050, which outlined strategies and measures needed to restore the state’s wetlands and barrier islands.
Coast 2050 proposed that the Mississippi River be re-engineered to imitate natural processes. That is, some portion of the river’s flow should be re-diverted via pipelines or canals to flush into the delta so that South Louisiana’s sinking ecosystems could be built up. “Coast 2050 essentially calls for putting holes in the straitjacketed Mississippi River,” says Conrad. “This process could be one of the most interesting and expensive and important environmental engineering processes ever. It is a huge opportunity to put things back together if we have the will.”
These water diversions would feed freshwater marshes and control saltwater intrusion from being pushed upriver by the rising sea level. The Caernarvon Freshwater Diversion Project, funded in the mid-1980s, could be one model for this approach. The diversion consists of a $26-million opening in the river levee built by the Army Corps about 24 miles south of New Orleans. A concrete culvert diverts water into a canal that feeds marshes behind Breton Sound, which had been losing land. This diversion has been shown to increase marsh and freshwater plant acreage.
Coast 2050 also recommended that federal agencies dredge soils and ancient sand-bars to create new marshlands; plug up the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet; and shore up barrier islands that are the first line of defense against approaching hurricanes. However, the cost cited in the report for all these projects seemed too huge to consider: $14 billion (by comparison, estimates for rebuilding after the 2005 hurricane season have been placed as high as $200 billion).
Kerry St. Pé, director of the Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary Program, says there’s no time to waste. Freshwater diversions alone are not enough to solve the land loss problem, he adds. Dredge material should be pumped immediately via pipes from navigation channels in the delta, including the Mississippi River, to shore up hot spots of wetland loss. “We need the sediment now,” he says. The Corps of Engineers already dredges 40–45 million cubic yards of sediment from the delta’s numerous navigation channels each year, he says, and the material is discharged off the end of the continental shelf because that’s the least expensive method of disposal. “We could use that sediment to build wetlands,” says St. Pé.
From 2000 through 2003, the Corps of Engineers and the state of Louisiana collaborated on a feasibility study for a $17-billion coastal restoration plan lasting 30 years. Yet this study, based on Coast 2050, also seemed far too expensive at the time. “It never went up to Congress because it exceeded what potentially could be funded,” says Steyer. “We were asked to focus it on more of the near term, over ten years, addressing what are the critical projects that could be done.”
In November 2004, state and federal agencies proposed a near-term effort, the Louisiana Coastal Area Ecosystem Restoration Study. The findings from this study led to the 2005 Water Resources Development Act, which calls for Congress to spend $1.9 billion over 10 years on restoration efforts in the delta; the bill is still being worked out in Congress. The act—intended to be a first, smaller step toward a 30-year $17-billion plan—follows the strategies of Coast 2050, says Steyer.
However, Oliver Houck, who directs the environment program at Tulane University Law School, says that nothing less than letting the river go its own way will solve the land loss problem. “Coast 2050 is history,” he says. “Katrina upped the ante so much. What has to be done now is to let the Mississippi River take its natural course and allow the full bed load of the river to rebuild the marsh.” He adds, “The problem with Coast 2050 and other restoration plans is that they fail to halt wetland destruction in the same areas they are trying to restore. New canals, deeper canals, expanded ports are all on the table. No way that works.”
Indeed, if water control projects were destroyed and the Mississippi were allowed to take its natural course, it would inevitably become captured by the Atchafalaya River, which empties off the south-central coast of Louisiana. The combined flow and increased sediment load would help build up the most land-starved region of Louisiana’s coast. But if the Mississippi River were set free, one of today’s most important shipping channels would become water-starved from Baton Rouge to the gulf outlet.
So how would giant oceangoing ships reach the ports of South Louisiana? Houck recommends cutting an entirely new shipping channel from the gulf to the port complex of South Louisiana. Where would this channel be located? “That’s up to the engineers,” Houck says.