Public comment period open on coastal restoration plan

LAFAYETTE -- Public comments have made a difference in the draft 2017 Louisiana Coastal Master Plan, one official told south Louisiana reporters Monday. And public comments still make a difference.
The comment period lasts through March 26. You can see the draft report and make comments online at this link.
The stakes are high, and so are the new estimates of the way climate change will generate a rise in sea level. The big news from the original release of the new draft was that what had been considered the worst case for sea level rise, about 2.7 feet over the next few decades, is now considered the best case.
That’s bad news for a state that has lost 183,000 square miles of coastal land in the last 80 years, equivalent to the area of Delaware. That’s about like losing Manhattan Island every year or a football field every hour.
And that, in turn, is bad news for a commercial fishery second only to Alaska’s; four of the nation’s top ports; the 20 percent of the of nation’s oil and gas supply that moves through the Louisiana coast; threatened and endangered species that make coastal Louisiana their home; and humans threatened or endangered by hurricane storm surges that can be reduced by a healthy coastal zone.
“They’re incredibly valuable,” research geographer Brad Couvillion of the U.S. Geological Survey told the Acadiana Press Club. “But we’re losing them at a staggering rate.”
Couvillion was joined at the Wetland and Aquatic Research Center by Nedra Davis, executive director of the Chenier Plain Coastal Restoration & Protection Authority.
Davis said drafting the original plan involved whittling $270 billion in needed projects to $50 billion. Even with the money Louisiana will receive because of the Deepwater Horizon spill settlement, the plan remains underfunded.
Public comments resulted in 22 changes in the draft plan.
“The plan is going to be based on the best available science,” Davis said. “But we want public input.”
Priorities differ from area to area, she said. In the Chenier Plain region, the emphasis is on shoreline protection, Davis said. Statewide, the priority is creating new marshland.
That may have been the reason behind one of the changes that controversial in St. Mary Parish. The 2012 plan included money for a $100 million structure to prevent Bayou Chene back-flooding. Last January, a sunken barge was used to block back-flooding, and officials were hoping for a permanent solution.
The Bayou Chene work was dropped from the 2017 draft plan.