Speaker: Coastal restoration plan shows land gain

If the Louisiana state master plan for coastal restoration goes according to schedule, the coast would begin to see net land gain by 2042, the first time that has happened since the 1930s, Philip Russo, outreach coordinator for the Mississippi River Delta Restoration Campaign, said Wednesday.
Russo and James Wyerman, director of Strategic Partnership & Communications of the Mississippi River Delta Restoration Campaign, were the guest speakers at the St. Mary Parish Chamber of Commerce Business Luncheon held at the Petroleum Club of Morgan City.
Sediment diversions will provide the bulk of the land-building capacity in the state master plan, Russo said.
Wyerman said Louisiana is losing a lot of coastal land, but the state master plan does offer a solution. “We really need businesses to speak up and pay attention to this,” Wyerman said.
The state is losing one football field of land an hour to coastal erosion, Wyerman said. Even moderate projections for coastal land loss show that $7.7 billion to $22 billion in infrastructure could be lost annually by 2060, he said.
Businesses are increasingly speaking out for coastal restoration, and the RESTORE (Resources and Ecosystems Sustainability, Tourist Opportunities and Revived Economies) Act would not have been passed if not for efforts of businesses, Wyerman said.
The Mississippi River Delta Restoration Campaign is aimed at determining where money will come from to restore the coast, Wyerman said. The program has also released studies showing how coastal restoration can benefit the economy by creating new markets for restoration equipment, Wyerman said.
The RESTORE Act will bring $5 billion to $17 billion back to the Gulf states for coastal restoration, Wyerman said. There is already $4 billion on the criminal side associated with the 2010 oil spill, Wyerman said.
This year is important for restoration efforts because unanimous support exists in the Legislature for the state’s coastal restoration master plan, Wyerman said.
Russo said the master plan has a wide array of projects because the problem is not simple.
The restoration campaign got feedback from engineering firms, science consulting companies and universities along with fishing boat captains and people in the oyster and shrimping industries, Russo said.
The master plan includes $50 billion worth of projects over 50 years, Russo said. “Even with this plan, we’re still going to lose. There’s only so much that we can restore,” Russo said.
Those projects consist of bank stabilization, barrier island restoration, hydrologic restoration, open marsh creation through dredging, strategic river diversions, channel realignment, oyster barrier reef construction and rock placement along the shoreline, Russo said. The projects are interdependent so they cannot be done by themselves, Russo said.
A significant portion of the plan is dedicated to levee improvements, Russo said. Restoration leaders want to perpetuate the land-building beyond the 50-year plan, he said.
Two types of Atchafalaya River diversions are contained in the master plan. One will be consist of moving sediment toward Terrebonne Bay while the other will constitute dredging the Intracoastal Waterway to allow for greater freshwater entry into the marshes, Russo said.
During the 2011 flood, the excessive amount of water coming down the Atchafalaya River put a lot of pressure on Morgan City’s backwater levees, Russo, who is originally from Morgan City, said. “We have done a lot of coastal protection the last two centuries that we’ve been here, but what we haven’t been doing is building land,” Russo said.
The Wax Lake Outlet was built in 1942 by the Corps of Engineers to reduce flood stages in Morgan City, and the region has the ability to build a coastline that will continue to thrive for centuries to come, Russo said.
U.S. Rep. Charles Boustany, R-Lafayette, who attended the business luncheon, said restoring the coast and providing hurricane protection are critically important issues for everyone on the coast. The master plan is designed for the long term and some issues exist with sediment diversions as far as who will benefit and who will have problems with the diversions, Boustany said.
“There are some controversies that need to be worked out. But I’m confident we’ll get those done. The important thing is to develop a plan along with funding mechanisms so that we can actually do all this work,” he said.