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Jolie Rouge
10-14-2004, 08:57 PM
http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0410/feature5/images/ft_hdr.5.jpg

The Louisiana bayou, hardest working marsh in America, is in big trouble—with dire consequences for residents, the nearby city of New Orleans, and seafood lovers everywhere.

http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0410/feature5/images/mp_tnail.5.jpg

Get a taste of what awaits you in print from this compelling excerpt. http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0410/feature5/index.html



It was a broiling August afternoon in New Orleans, Louisiana, the Big Easy, the City That Care Forgot. Those who ventured outside moved as if they were swimming in tupelo honey. Those inside paid silent homage to the man who invented air-conditioning as they watched TV "storm teams" warn of a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico. Nothing surprising there: Hurricanes in August are as much a part of life in this town as hangovers on Ash Wednesday.

But the next day the storm gathered steam and drew a bead on the city. As the whirling maelstrom approached the coast, more than a million people evacuated to higher ground. Some 200,000 remained, however—the car-less, the homeless, the aged and infirm, and those die-hard New Orleanians who look for any excuse to throw a party.

The storm hit Breton Sound with the fury of a nuclear warhead, pushing a deadly storm surge into Lake Pontchartrain. The water crept to the top of the massive berm that holds back the lake and then spilled over. Nearly 80 percent of New Orleans lies below sea level—more than eight feet (two meters) below in places—so the water poured in. A liquid brown wall washed over the brick ranch homes of Gentilly, over the clapboard houses of the Ninth Ward, over the white-columned porches of the Garden District, until it raced through the bars and strip joints on Bourbon Street like the pale rider of the Apocalypse. As it reached 25 feet (eight meters) over parts of the city, people climbed onto roofs to escape it.

Thousands drowned in the murky brew that was soon contaminated by sewage and industrial waste. Thousands more who survived the flood later perished from dehydration and disease as they waited to be rescued. It took two months to pump the city dry, and by then the Big Easy was buried under a blanket of putrid sediment, a million people were homeless, and 50,000 were dead. It was the worst natural disaster in the history of the United States.

When did this calamity happen? It hasn't—yet. But the doomsday scenario is not far-fetched. The Federal Emergency Management Agency lists a hurricane strike on New Orleans as one of the most dire threats to the nation, up there with a large earthquake in California or a terrorist attack on New York City. Even the Red Cross no longer opens hurricane shelters in the city, claiming the risk to its workers is too great.

"The killer for Louisiana is a Category Three storm at 72 hours before landfall that becomes a Category Four at 48 hours and a Category Five at 24 hours—coming from the worst direction," says Joe Suhayda, a retired coastal engineer at Louisiana State University who has spent 30 years studying the coast. Suhayda is sitting in a lakefront restaurant on an actual August afternoon sipping lemonade and talking about the chinks in the city's hurricane armor. "I don't think people realize how precarious we are," Suhayda says, watching sailboats glide by. "Our technology is great when it works. But when it fails, it's going to make things much worse."

The chances of such a storm hitting New Orleans in any given year are slight, but the danger is growing. Climatologists predict that powerful storms may occur more frequently this century, while rising sea level from global warming is putting low-lying coasts at greater risk. "It's not if it will happen," says University of New Orleans geologist Shea Penland. "It's when."


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If everyone would go to the http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0410/index.html
and vote yes to the poll saying that yes the Federal gov. should kick in
money to help save the wetlands.

Jolie Rouge
10-14-2004, 09:02 PM
Related Links

LAcoast
www.lacoast.gov
Maintained by the National Wetlands Research Center, this is an excellent site for articles, newsletters, and general background information on Louisiana's disappearing coastline and the restoration efforts to save it.


Save Louisiana Wetlands
www.savelawetlands.org
Find out more information about this program run by Louisiana's Department of Natural Resources.


Louisiana Coastal Area Ecosystem Restoration Plan
www.lca.gov
A comprehensive site that includes history and statistics on the coastal area, land change maps, and a link to the LCA draft plan.


National Wetlands Research Center
www.nwrc.usgs.gov
Read factsheets, news releases, and hot topics on Louisiana's coastline and wetlands in general, from this research center of the U.S. Geological Survey.

Jolie Rouge
01-31-2005, 11:56 AM
Students turn swamp into classroom
Monday, January 31, 2005 Posted: 10:24 AM EST (1524 GMT)

http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2005/EDUCATION/01/31/swampy.school.ap/vert.swamp.ap.jpg
Kristen Magee, of Houma, Louisiana, navigates a swamp at the Jean Lafitte National Historic Park and Preserve in Marrero, Louisiana.


NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (AP) -- Fourteen-year-old Kristen Magee knows all too well about Louisiana's disappearing wetlands. Her family's fishing camp had lots of land around it five years ago. Now there's almost none.

This week, she and 11 other students will appear in daily live satellite broadcasts to teach 1.7 million students around the world about Louisiana's wetlands loss and related topics. Magee is a ninth-grader at Houma Junior High, an hour's drive from New Orleans. The others are from as far afield as New York, California and Mexico.

Their week in southern Louisiana is part of the Jason Project, an educational enterprise launched 16 years ago by oceanographer Robert D. Ballard. "Students need to know the scientific process. The best way is to put them right into the field with the field teams -- be assistants to our field scientists," he said.

One of the first things the students learned to do on the Louisiana expedition was walk through a swamp in waders -- something they need to do to take water samples and do other tasks during the next week. "I've been in hip-boots before. But waders are a lot different. A lot heavier," Magee said. And, although she'd been in a marsh, she'd never been in a swamp. The water and weeds hide a treacherous surface. "At one point you'd be on level ground; at another you'd just fall," she said.

Josh Blackwell, a ninth-grader at Bedford High near Cleveland, Ohio, said he fell many times. Thanks to the waders, he only got a bit muddy. And, he noted, the boots are thick enough to protect him from snake bites.


Outdoor classroom

This week they'll be in three teams, working with Louisiana scientists studying marsh restoration, frogs, nutria and oyster ecology. For the classes taking part in the Jason Project, the expedition culminates a year of study with Internet-based lesson plans for field "expeditions" on students' home ground and "digital labs" where students can catch animated frogs and tadpoles.

"We tend to cover the major sciences -- the chemistries, the biology, geology. We also like to bring in the social issues we're facing in the disappearance of the wetlands, and where we see it heading," Ballard said.

The five hourlong live broadcasts from will take place in Jean Lafitte National Park, the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium's laboratory at Port Fourchon and its marine center in Cocodrie. Ballard said he got the idea from kids. After he discovered the wreckage of the Titanic in 1985, he said, he got a flood of letters from schoolchildren asking if they could go on his next expedition.

His Mediterranean expedition four years later was covered with live satellite broadcasts to 250,000 schoolchildren at 13 museums. About 33,000 teachers and their classes are currently involved, some as far away as Australia. He said that, as an oceanographer, he's known for a long time that Louisiana's wetlands are eroding, but became "acutely aware" of it after being named to the President's Commission for Ocean Policy three years ago.


http://www.cnn.com/2005/EDUCATION/01/31/swampy.school.ap/index.html

Freebeemom
01-31-2005, 12:33 PM
Isn't this part of the evolutionary process? The earth is shifting, things will change. Personally, if this is funded and approved, then who is to pay when the project fails? Insurance rates for those who live there will be through the roof.

Jolie Rouge
01-31-2005, 12:58 PM
Isn't this part of the evolutionary process? The earth is shifting, things will change. Personally, if this is funded and approved, then who is to pay when the project fails?

No, the federally funded projects have created the problem.

The river floods - brings down soil from the North to create a Delta. Rivers change courses, leaving behind fertils land for crops. Levees, dams, and other flood control projects channel all the flood waters directly into the Gulf. Erosion is eating away at the coastlands - we are lossing more than 2 football fields worth of land EVERY DAY. We have lost several of the Barrier islands in the last few years. Since the federally funded projects created the problems shouldn't they fix it now ?


Insurance rates for those who live there will be through the roof.

Not possiable to get insurance when your property is under the Gulf. Several companies simply will not insure in certain areas at all.

Dragonfairie
01-31-2005, 03:35 PM
yes, the loss of the wetlands affect everyone and although it may have happened eventually - mans interference has increased the rate of "evolution".

Jolie Rouge
03-06-2006, 10:44 PM
[b]Well, protecting New Orleans against the elements. It's never been easy. Marshlands have provided a natural barrier against hurricanes, but over the years many of those swampy areas have vanished. CNN's Rob Marciano has this "Best of CNN" report.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ROB MARCIANO, CNN CORRESPONDENT, (voice over): The marshes around New Orleans are disappearing, slowly sinking into the Gulf of Mexico. The marshes are shallow waters that block a hurricane's surging waters as it comes ashore.

CHRIS PIEHLER, DEPT. OF ENVIRON. QUALITY: The marsh is really the first speed bump that the storms come through that slows down their energy and so they're not as strong by the time they get up to New Orleans.

MARCIANO: Chuck Velerubia (ph) has been monitoring the health of the marshes for Louisiana. Over the years, he's seen fewer and fewer of the big trees whose roots anchor other plants.

PIEHLER: We used to have cypress down here, which are no longer here in a lot of areas because of salt water intrusion.

MARCIANO: This is a diversion. A gated lock that helps move water from the Mississippi River into the marshes.

PIEHLER: They deposit sediment and nutrients out into these wetland areas.

MARCIANO: There are only two diversions in place along the lower Mississippi, but several more are planned. Velerubia says a bad situation got critical when Katrina bulldozed through the Louisiana marshes.

I'm standing in the marsh about 15 miles south of New Orleans. Before Katrina, we'd be waist high in healthy marsh grasses, but the storm ripped up those grasses leaving little more than mud flats and open water behind.

In other words, first the trees disappear and then, when the grasses are gone, there is little to keep the soil from washing out to sea. Imagine what the loss of the marshes means to the fishing industry here.

Pete Gerica is a Louisiana fisherman. He's worried about the fish and the crabs that make their homes in the marshes.

PETE GERICA, LOUISIANA FISHERMAN: And without that marsh being their protection to protect them from larger criters, you're not going to keep them.

MARCIANO: The marshes are a nursery. Shrimp, crabs and fish all rely on the wetlands to grow. Gerica knows that no marshes means no fishing.

GERICA: You look at this pass here and you can see where the birds are. They're standing. They're on land. This pass here, the shoreline, probably came out another hundred feet this way.

MARCIANO: Velerubia is also worried. He knows the next hurricane season is little more than four months away and worries if another big one comes there is little to stop its full force.

PIEHLER: Certainly this next season or two until the levees get put back together a little bit and some of the marsh comes back, this area will certainly be more vulnerable.

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0602/26/sun.02.html

Jolie Rouge
03-15-2006, 09:50 PM
Carpe coast
Thursday, February 23, 2006

Louisiana has fought a lonely and losing battle to boost its share of offshore oil royalties, but the state might gain some new allies if oil and gas drilling expands in response to high energy costs.

Strategically, this is a critical moment for Louisiana, and the state's congressional delegation is wisely seizing it. Last week, Sen. Mary Landrieu, along with Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi, threatened to withhold support of a bill to open up a new area in the northeastern Gulf of Mexico to drilling unless coastal, energy-producing states get a greater share of the royalties.

Rep. Bobby Jindal has filed a bill that he hopes will broaden support for revenue sharing. His measure lifts a federal moratorium on Outer Continental Shelf drilling by 2012. States would get control over what happens off their shores for the first 125 miles -- a provision that's designed to ease environmental concerns. They'd also get a generous share of offshore royalties: 75 percent for the first 12 nautical miles and 50 percent farther out.

The revenue sharing would be phased in over 15 years. Louisiana would get $600 million per year immediately; $1 billion annually by 2011 and $2.2 billion per year by 2022.

Rep. Jindal's bill would give states on the East and West coasts a stake in the revenue-sharing debate. He's also seeking inland support by giving those states a share of revenue from oil shale and tar sands mined within their boundaries.

Louisiana lawmakers aren't the only ones who are looking at this issue. A bill filed by Sen. John Warner of Virginia and Sen. Mark Pryor of Arkansas that would allow states to opt out of the drilling moratorium also provides a 50 percent share of royalties.

Louisiana has long sought a fair share of the wealth that's produced off our coast, and we have a strong case. Oil and gas exploration is one of the factors in this state's wetland loss, and we need a stable, sufficient stream of money for coastal restoration. This is the logical source.

Oil and gas activity has undeniably cost us, in terms of environmental damage and in terms of what the state has to spend to support that industry. Yet coastal, oil-producing states don't enjoy the same 50 percent share of revenue that inland states get for drilling done on federal lands within their boundaries.

Those arguments haven't convinced Congress to support a fair split. But making it worthwhile for other states might finally be the approach that will work. And now, while gasoline lines and high winter heating bills are fresh on people's minds, might at last be the right time.

http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/editorials/in...68045495180.xml

Jolie Rouge
05-11-2006, 09:28 PM
A timely alarm on eroded coast
Opinion page staff
Published: May 11, 2006

In the battle to fund coastal restoration for Louisiana, sympathetic national media coverage of the issue is one of the few things the state has going for it at the moment.

The total price tag for restoring the wetlands has been estimated at $14 billion — a cost so large that federal investment in the restoration is imperative.

But that’s been a tough sell in Washington, D.C., where Louisiana has little seniority in its congressional delegation, and the high cost of coastal restoration carries more than a little sticker shock on Capitol Hill.

Given the challenges, and the dire consequences of doing nothing, it helps when influential national media organs throw a spotlight on Louisiana’s ravaged coastline and make the case for strong action.

A heartening case in point was a recent New York Times editorial bemoaning the short shrift that Louisiana’s coastal restoration efforts are getting in Congress.

“Wetlands restoration has been pushed to the bottom of a very long post-hurricane priority list,” the Times lamented. “That may not be surprising, but it is a big mistake.”

The Times went on to say:

“Much of the wetlands-shrinking is due to a long line of bad decisions before the hurricane. Since the 1930s, Louisiana has lost wetlands equal to the size of Delaware. The Army Corps of Engineers built dams, levees and canals along the Mississippi River that held back or diverted much of the sediment that had naturally replenished the delta soil. Channels dug for shipping have allowed salt water to infiltrate and kill off vegetation. In effect, our tinkering starved the wetlands and barrier islands. That makes it all the more important to seize this moment, when the whole country’s attention is focused on making southern Louisiana more secure, and begin to undo the damage.”

Local supporters of coastal restoration have been sounding such an alarm for years. But it can’t hurt when the message gets national attention in America’s leading newspaper.

We hope that helps build some much-needed momentum for making Louisiana’s coast whole again.

http://www.2theadvocate.com/opinion/2782201.html

Jolie Rouge
05-11-2006, 09:34 PM
Pecan Island recovering slowly
Some residents vow never to go; others won’t be back
By RICHARD BURGESS -- Acadiana bureau
Published: May 11, 2006

Pecan Island resident Neil Bourque saws lumber Wednesday as he builds a new house. Bourque's former home was swept off its foundation by Hurricane Rita in September. Bourque is taking on the home-construction task largely by himself.

PECAN ISLAND — Garland Winch can remember when Hurricane Audrey plowed through this tiny Vermilion Parish community in 1957.

The 74-year-old can also remember a time when groceries, mail and visitors came only on a boat that made the trip every day except Sunday.

He was born and raised in a house next to his own, and despite Hurricane Rita or the prospect of another storm, he has faith that Pecan Island will survive. “They said after Hurricane Audrey it would never be the same, but it came back and got better,” Winch said. “It’ll come back. Just give it time.”

Pecan Island rests on a ridge that pushes out of the marsh about 6 miles from the Gulf of Mexico. When Hurricane Rita struck southwestern Louisiana on Sept. 23-24, the storm pushed an estimated 10-foot surge of water over this community, twisting mobile homes around trees and tossing houses off their foundations into the marsh.

Winch said he was lucky. His home is still standing, and he was able to return about a month after Rita.

Most residents were not as fortunate, and only a fraction of the homes are livable.

Some houses have been demolished or await demolition. Others remain in the marsh where Rita left them.

Only one of the two stores in town has reopened, and the Vermilion Parish School Board closed the Pecan Island School earlier this year, less because of damage than because of the small student population — about 50 before the storm and fewer afterward.

But there are signs of life.

Residents have come together to clean the community graveyard and fix up the churches.

A mobile home has been brought in to replace the community’s only lounge, the Coastal Bar.

Travel trailers are slowly beginning to fill lots while residents work to rebuild, most choosing to elevate their new homes several feet off the ground.

Neil Bourque worked Wednesday to finish up the walk-around deck on what he hopes to call home by next year. The large creosote poles he set to support the new home rise 7 feet. “I was 20 years younger when I built the other one. This one is harder,” said Bourque, 49, an oilfield electronics technician.

Bourque is building 4 miles down the road from his first home, which remains pushed up against a tree that stopped the home from washing into the marsh. He had hoped to hire the construction job out, but considering the price and the wait for good carpenters in the wake of the hurricanes, he opted to do the work himself with the help of family. He and his wife are living with his father-in-law, Winch, until the new house is ready.

Bourque estimated that more than half of the community will eventually return. “A lot of people said they weren’t coming back,” he said.

The younger generation, those with children, may not want to return to an area where the nearest school is more than 20 miles away. Bourque said many of the young people most likely would have left anyway. “They didn’t want to be here before the storm. They want to go to Wal-Mart every minute,” Bourque said. “… I like the peace and quiet.”

Some residents are choosing to sell their land for what appears to be an increasing number of hunting camps taking shape in the area, for its waterfowl. “You can’t find property for sale,” Winch said. “There are probably as many camps as residents.”

Betty Broussard said she can’t conceive of coming back after the storm. “I lost my home, like many others,” she said, sitting at a table in the only store open in Pecan Island — The Pecan Island Food Store.

Broussard once worked there as a rural postal clerk. At 69, she is starting over, living with her daughter in Lafayette while waiting for a rent house in Abbeville. Broussard, who had made the trip back to Pecan Island on Wednesday to buy some shrimp and visit, said “city life” in Lafayette leaves much to be desired. “It’s not like here,” she said.

Despite her love for the area, Broussard said, she has trouble even visiting a community that remains tattered. “I’m 69 years old, and I’m sure not coming back,” she said.


http://www.2theadvocate.com/news/2782731.html

Jolie Rouge
06-07-2006, 09:03 AM
Governor Seeks Oil Revenue For Louisiana
Blanco Threatens to Block Federal Auction Of Offshore Leases if Proceeds Aren't Shared
By CHRISTOPHER COOPER
June 5, 2006; Page A4

WASHINGTON -- Federal officials want to open part of the Gulf of Mexico to oil drilling this summer. But their plans are being complicated by Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco, who says she'll try to derail the effort unless Washington shares the proceeds with her state.

Gov. Blanco is bucking an industry she generally has favored, and risks the ire of Washington, which is providing billions of dollars in reconstruction money to her storm-racked state. Even so, she says she will try to block the August auction of offshore oil properties in the western Gulf unless the federal government agrees to help restore the state's wetlands, which scientists say are disappearing at an alarming rate.

These scientists say decades of oil exploration have taken a toll on Louisiana's marshes, which are seen as the most effective way to combat storm surges that accompany hurricanes, such as those of Katrina and Rita, which hit the state last year. It is a problem Congress began addressing last year, when it agreed to provide some $500 million in restoration money. But with federal estimates projecting the state will need as much as $16 billion to restore the Bayou state's marshes and swamps, Ms. Blanco wants a sustained stream of money to address the problem.

Unlike onshore oil drilling, in which the federal government shares royalties from leased lands through a 50-50 split with the state, Washington has never shared the proceeds from the biggest offshore properties it leases to energy companies. Ms. Blanco aims to change this. "All we want is what the interior states get," said Blanco spokeswoman Denise Bottcher, who says Gov. Blanco risks angering Congress and the Bush administration just as Capitol Hill is debating the merits of providing several billion dollars in reconstruction money to the state.

"I think where they could be vindictive is on the levee money," Ms. Bottcher said. "But you can't build levees to protect New Orleans if the coast isn't there."


It is unclear whether Ms. Blanco can force the cancellation of the August lease sale, but she may be able to delay it, since she can file an objection with the Interior Department. If the department rejects her complaint, Ms. Blanco can appeal to the Commerce secretary. If the Commerce secretary overrides her, Ms. Blanco has hired a Washington lawyer and threatened a suit. Because that suit would be heard in federal court in New Orleans, a venue presumably sympathetic to her case, some industry officials say Ms. Blanco's threat could delay or force the cancellation of two oil lease sales in the northern Gulf of Mexico, one in August and one scheduled for next spring.

The western and central Gulf is one of the few areas off the continental U.S. where drilling is allowed, and accounts for about 30% of the nation's domestic oil production. Auctions of these properties generally are held twice a year.

"Some might see this as an idle threat," Ms. Blanco told a group of activists in New Orleans last week. "They shouldn't. For decades, Louisiana has made its case. We have asked for a reasonable share of outer continental shelf revenues. And we were snubbed."

The proceeds from offshore oil auctions in the Gulf are significant: With oil prices at historical highs, an auction of offshore oil tracts off Louisiana in March fetched nearly $1 billion in bids from a variety of integrated and independent exploration companies. Though the properties in the proposed August action aren't thought to contain as much oil or natural gas as those in the prior sale, the Interior Department -- which supervises the process -- expects the auction to generate spirited bidding.

It is not unusual for governors to block offshore drilling. Florida has battled Washington in recent years to ban such activity, arguing that the potential for spills vastly outweighs the economic benefit.

Though the Louisiana congressional delegation supports Ms. Blanco's decision to challenge Washington for a share of the offshore lease proceeds, the strategy troubles some members. The Bush administration endorsed a $4 billion proposal to improve the levee system around New Orleans, but it is included in a supplemental spending bill languishing on Capitol Hill. With enthusiasm for Gulf Coast reconstruction waning in some quarters, congressmen such as Bobby Jindal, a Republican who represents a slice of suburban New Orleans, fret that payback could be in the offing if Ms. Blanco follows through on her threat. Mr. Jindal and Mary Landrieu, the state's senior senator, have sponsored bills that would force the federal government to share offshore oil lease proceeds.

Mr. Jindal supports Ms. Blanco's goal of forcing the federal government to share the proceeds but avoided endorsing her legal strategy, saying he would rather "make it moot" by winning passage of his bill. Mr. Jindal says he has been told by the House leadership that his bill will get a hearing this month.

Last week, Ms. Blanco formally complained that the proposed sale conflicts with Louisiana's coastal-management plan. Her attorney, William Szabo, said he assumes the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service will overrule the governor, after which the Commerce secretary will determine whether her objection has merit. If Commerce overrules her, Mr. Szabo said he intends to file suit against the Minerals Management Service in New Orleans, to block the sale.

A spokesman for the Interior Department said it is considering its response to Ms. Blanco's objections.

The oil industry opposes the governor's move. Larry Wall, a spokesman for the Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association, which represents a number of potential bidders for the offshore tracts, says Gov. Blanco is spiting herself by opposing the sale.

He points out that the state gets revenue, indirectly, from the leases, through a severance tax on oil and gas production when the properties are developed. "If she blocks the lease sale, she's going to block revenue sharing," Mr. Wall said. He said that while the association doesn't object to a revenue share from federal auctions, he fails to see the urgency. "We have paid the state billions in royalties and severance taxes over the years, and none of that has been set aside for coastal restoration," Mr. Wall said. "This is not a new problem."

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB114946444533071059-FxGmtzQKNLYbNGAU590Y7E1hs8Q_20070605.html?mod=blog s



Several point to make :

Why do they continually refer to her as Ms. Blanco - a subtle disrespect - the title they should be using here is Gov. Blanco....

CA and FL recieve 75% of their offshore leases - if we received a more equidable portion then we might not need as much Federal Funding - but that also means the the Feds would not have CONTROL of the monies - and we are talking A LOT of money.

If the Feds had allotted more to preserving the Wetlands as we have been begging for YEARS - then we might not have the level of damages from Katrina and Rita. Every mile of Wetlands decreases a foot of a hurricane's storm surge. The Barrier Islands have that title for a reason.

Jolie Rouge
07-31-2006, 09:16 PM
Geography shifts in the wake of the storm
10 October 1998
From New Scientist Print Edition.

HURRICANE Georges has not only left behind a trail of misery, it may also force cartographers to redraw maps of the Mississippi Delta.

Until Georges roared through on 27 September, the Louisiana coast was protected by a low-lying 50-kilometre arc of sand called Chandeleur Island. But when Thomas Michot of the US Geological Survey in Lafayette flew over the area after the storm, he saw "about a hundred" islands, some separated by several kilometres of water.

If Chandeleur Island has been permanently breached, this may have lasting consequences for the region's ecology. The shallow waters surrounding Chandeleur contain one of the largest seagrass beds in the Gulf of Mexico, which supports a wealth of invertebrates. These are in turn eaten by fish and birds.

Louisiana's coastal defences may also suffer. The island breaks the force of storm waves before they reach threatened marshes along the Louisiana coast. It also protects New Orleans, which is vulnerable to flooding despite being 60 kilometres inland.

The damage is the worst since photographic surveys began in the 1930s, says Greg Stone of Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. Although Georges was not as severe as Hurricane Camille in 1969, it moved much more slowly, so the island took more of a battering from waves and wind.

Geomorphologists consider Chandeleur one of America's most threatened coastal barrier islands and expected it to disappear within a few hundred years. The damage wrought by Georges will hasten its demise.

From issue 2155 of New Scientist magazine, 10 October 1998, page 16

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg16021552.900.html



Study: Katrina, Rita may have KO’d islands
Scientists fail to find Chandeleur’s sandy start to rebuilding
By MIKE DUNNE -- Advocate staff writer
Published: Jul 31, 2006

Shea Penland, professor and chairman of the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at University of New Orleans, points at a map book that shows the erosion of barrier islands over time along the Louisiana coast.

Researchers mapping the Louisiana coast say they can’t find the sand and sediment that normally rebuilt the Chandeleur Islands east of New Orleans after past big storms.

Hurricanes like Camille in 1969 and Ivan in 2004 pushed sand to the rear of the islands in what is known as “overwash fans,” or splays of sand usually in the shape of an open folding fan. After each monster storm, the island chain slowly rebuilt itself on those fans, always a little smaller than before the storms.

Underwater mapping around the islands and in the Gulf of Mexico shows no such fans or any other sands and sediments that might help rebuild the islands, according to University of New Orleans geology professors Shea Penland and Mark Kulp. The mapping also shows evidence of landslides on the seafloor slopes on the Gulf side, which they say has not been seen before. The now-deeper water might increase the size of some of the waves hitting — and eroding — the remnants, they said. Another research vessel mapping another part of the chain apparently found the same landslide scars, Kulp said.

Dawn Lavoie of the U.S. Geological Survey, working with Penland and Kulp, even wonders if Katrina so severely damaged the islands one has to ask: “Is there a threshold (that has been reached) where the island won’t rebuild itself?”

Penland said the islands act as a “speed bump,” or barrier for storms approaching southeastern Louisiana and coastal Mississippi. Computer models designed to predict hurricane flooding show the islands help reduce the storm surge in the marshes protecting the New Orleans area, he said.

Penland is leading the Barrier Island Comprehensive Monitoring effort to map the Louisiana coast, barrier islands and offshore zones. It is being funded by the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources, U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and UNO.

“This is the biggest assessment of the coastline” in more than 20 years, said Penland, who is also director of the geology department at UNO. “We are looking at every map that has ever been made since 1850” in trying to decide how Louisiana’s coastline and offshore waters and barrier islands have changed.

Kulp is overseeing the underwater mapping, which will provide new data to complete a 100-year history of seafloor change along the coast.

All of the data will eventually be available for the state, Corps of Engineers and other agencies that will be designing future coastal restoration projects.

Kulp’s underwater surveys found what appear to be seafloor landslides on the Gulf of Mexico side of the northern tip of the island chain. Another ship doing similar work along the central Chandeleurs found similar seafloor collapses, Kulp said. The two groups have not had a chance yet to share data, Kulp said.

The wind, waves and tides have always moved sand around the islands but they always found an equilibrium, Kulp said. But Katrina was “a major event that moved volumes of sediment” that “tampered with the equilibrium.”

Penland said a 1980s survey found the islands pretty stable “and we thought they would still be around in 300 years. Now, we are saying, maybe a decade.”

Historically, the fronts of the islands lost 20-30 feet of land each year, usually being rolled to the back of the island in those “overwash fans.”

Between 1996-2004, that loss grew to 300 feet per year following hurricanes like Georges, Lili and Ivan and Tropical Storm Isidore. Hurricanes Katrina and Rita practically blew the islands away, leaving only remnants.

“Katrina events tell us a lot,” Penland said. With forecasts for more powerful storms in the future, lessons from Katrina may become very valuable for decision-makers of the future, Penland said.

http://www.2theadvocate.com/news/3455671.html?showAll=y&c=y

Jolie Rouge
07-31-2006, 09:29 PM
Katrina: Behind the Tragedy
Taming the River to Let In the Sea
Southern Louisiana is sinking into the Gulf of Mexico.
The surprising culprit is overambitious flood control.

By Shea Penland

http://www.naturalhistorymag.com/master.html?http://www.naturalhistorymag.com/0205/0205_feature2.html

( to see the AMAZING graphics, you must go to this site. )

In February 2005, writing in Natural History, Shea Penland, Director of the Pontchartrain Institute for Environmental Sciences at the University of New Orleans, and the University’s Braunstein Professor of Petroleum Geology, outlined the threat of hurricanes and catastrophic flooding to the city of New Orleans and the surrounding Mississippi Delta region. Now, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the full horror of that threat has been realized. The toll of the dead mounts daily. The survivors are refugees: when—and whether—they will be able to return to what is left of their homes is unclear. Behind the tragedy lie both natural trends and the impact of human settlement and engineering. Penland’s article, reproduced below, explores these factors and provides a context for understanding the tragedy, as well as a guide to the obstacles that must be addressed as the devastated region is rebuilt.

If you live in Louisiana and don’t know how to swim, now might be a good time to learn. The state is rapidly disappearing into the Gulf of Mexico. As a result of hundreds of years of natural-resource exploitation and modifications to the flow of the Mississippi River, whose silty waters created the delta region of southern Louisiana, the state’s coast lost more than 1,900 square miles of land in the twentieth century alone. At the current rate of loss in Louisiana, an area of wetlands the size of the Baltimore-Washington, D.C., metropolitan area will disappear by 2050. Without putting a massive program of ecological restoration into effect immediately, the fertile crescent of the Mississippi River is doomed to wash away sometime in this century.

Habitable land has always been a critical issue in coastal Louisiana. Much of the state lies only a few feet above sea level; the highest elevation in Louisiana is only 535 feet. Much of the city of New Orleans is actually below the level of the Gulf of Mexico. No wonder, then, that the earliest European explorers, colonists, and entrepreneurs became preoccupied with “taming” the Mississippi. Wherever people settled, they built levees, channels, and canals to control the floods; they reclaimed land from the bottoms of swamps and running rivers; and they did whatever else they could to harvest the bounty of Louisiana’s deltaic Eden.



Actual and projected areas of land loss and gain in coastal Louisiana are detailed on the map above, based on a map by the Louisiana Land Change Study. Land builds up when the Mississippi, its flow slowed as it meets the still waters of the Gulf, deposits its burden of silt. Some land loss results from erosion, but the most important effect is subsidence. Silt left by flooding subsides with time, and without regular flooding to renew the layers of silt, the ground can sink low enough to become immersed in the Gulf. The areas running from just east of Morgan City, eastward to Head of Passes and the Chandeleur Islands are the ones affected by the absence of regular flooding; two centuries’ worth of levee building and flood control on the Mississippi have led to that unintended consequence. The most active areas of land buildup are the Atchafalaya Delta, south of Morgan City, and limited areas around Head of Passes, at the present mouth of the Mississippi.

Map © U.S. Geological Survey, National Wetlands Research Center


The Mississippi and other rivers, of course, are not the only threat to Louisiana’s lowlands. Every year hurricanes pose a threat from the Gulf of Mexico. The accompanying storm surges cause local, short-term flooding, but they also lead to permanent erosion of the coastal marshes and barrier islands in the Gulf, which provide the only protection for the inhabited lowlands farther inland. Louisianans have focused on river flooding for hundreds of years, yet only in the mid-1970s did the state begin to take the coastal erosion problem seriously.

The breakdown of the marshes and beaches coupled with the drainage of reclaimed lowlands remains a disaster in the making. New Orleans’s defenses would simply crumble if a truly enormous storm lingered over the city for long: a storm the size of, say, Hurricane Ivan, which made landfall along the Gulf coast of Alabama last fall, roughly 150 miles to the east. Even many residents do not realize that New Orleans is on the brink of becoming the next Atlantis, the fabled island that, according to Greek legend, sank into the sea.

Beach erosion and flooding are still not the heart of the problem facing Louisiana: subsidence of the delta plain is.
Important as they are, though, beach erosion and flooding are still not the heart of the problem facing Louisiana: subsidence of the delta plain is. Before the levees were built to channel and “control” the Mississippi and other nearby rivers, floodwaters would spread out and slow down as they flowed over the delta. When the flow slowed, the river would deposit its burden of silt, forming a new layer of earth. But the levees, which now constrict floods along a 1,200-mile corridor of the Mississippi, keep the floodwaters from spreading across the delta. Instead, the river-borne silt is lost off the edge of the continental shelf.

The delta, primarily mud that already filled the Mississippi River valley before the levees were built, is continuously being compacted under its own weight. As it compacts, it loses elevation, and without floods, no new sediments can arrive to build the land back up. In the past several hundred years, subsidence rates have ranged from a foot to four and a half feet per century.

Compounding the risk of catastrophic flooding is global climate change. Many climatologists expect such change to cause hurricanes even more frequent and more violent than the ones of the past several years. Sea levels are expected to rise by ten to twenty inches. As Louisiana’s marshes and barrier islands sink farther into the sea, the people of Louisiana could find themselves exposed to the elements. But the present trends and ominous signs of coastal land loss in Louisiana threaten much more than just the environment, economy, and people of the state. The importance of the Mississippi and, in particular, New Orleans to the commerce of the nation makes the crisis a threat to the entire United States.

The importance of the Mississippi and, in particular, New Orleans to the commerce of the nation makes the crisis a threat to the entire United States.

The threatened collapse of coastal Louisiana has been centuries, even millennia, in the making. Eighteen thousand years ago, with the end of the last ice age, sea levels began to rise dramatically. For thousands of years the great glaciers that had formed in the preceding era melted into the ocean, until, four thousand years ago, the sea level stabilized. But the Mississippi now met the sea in what had been its old valley. The river water, halted in its course by the Gulf of Mexico, no longer had the energy to carry its sediment. The sediment, falling out of the flow, began filling in the ancient river valley. The result was a subsidence-prone delta that could maintain its elevation only so long as sediment from upstream reached the delta plain each year.

Meanwhile, for thousands of years, the Mississippi Delta has undergone a process known as “delta-lobe switching.” The path the river takes to the Gulf is constantly changing, because the river is continuously drawn along the most efficient path to the Gulf [see map on opposite page]. Thus time and again the delta forms and reforms. By roughly four thousand years ago, the St. Bernard delta lobe was building up to the east of New Orleans and cut off three bays from the sea; those became lakes Maurepas, Pontchartrain, and Borgne [see map above]. The lobe terminated at the Chandeleur Islands, to the east. Geologically, though, that drainage did not last long. By roughly three thousand years ago, the Mississippi was probably also entering the Gulf via the Lafourche lobe, which lies southwest of present-day New Orleans. That delta lobe formed the region around the present-day communities of Houma, Golden Meadow, and Grand Isle.

The path the river takes to the Gulf is constantly changing, because the river is continuously drawn along the most efficient path to the Gulf.

Jolie Rouge
08-18-2006, 11:31 AM
This is to let you know of an upcoming LPB and PBS television documentary that I think will be of interest to you.

Christina Melton, an award winning Louisiana Public Broadcasting producer has completed a powerful documentary that will air within Louisiana on public broadcasting stations on the one-year anniversary of Katrina on August 29, 2006 at 8:00 p.m. It will air again in Louisiana on September 3, 2006 at 4:00 p.m.

For those of you outside of Louisiana, Washing Away will air nationally on September 7, 2006 at 8:00 p.m. CST (9:00 p.m. EST).

Washing Away: Losing Louisiana the story of Louisiana's disappearing coastline and how this unfolding crisis affects all of America - is told through the eyes of people affected by hurricanes Katrina and Rita. It is narrated by academy award winner, Susan Sarandon.

You can see a preview of Washing Away at the following link. Scroll down to the bottom of the poster at the link and you can see a preview of the documentary.

http://www.lpb.org/programs/washingaway/

If you have the time, it would help if you could spread the word to your friends and contacts around the United States about this documentary.

Washing Away is a very powerful story that will help people to understand the depth of the connection between our south Louisiana culture, economy, and ecology.

Warm regards,

Kerry M. St.PĂ, Program Director

Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary Program

http://www.btnep.org/

Jolie Rouge
01-02-2007, 01:06 PM
Louisiana slowly slipping into gulf
By CAIN BURDEAU, Associated Press Writer
Mon Jan 1, 9:47 PM ET

NEW ORLEANS - A new report by scientists studying Louisiana's sinking coast says the land here is not just sinking, it's sliding ever so slowly into the Gulf of Mexico.

The new findings may add a kink to plans being drawn up to build bigger and better levees to protect this historic city and Cajun bayou culture.

If the land is shifting — even slightly — engineers may need to take that into consideration as they build new levees and draw lines across the coast to identify areas that should and shouldn't be protected.

Researchers have known for years that the swampy land under south Louisiana is sinking (potholed streets and wobbly porches and floors are visible evidence of that) but a lateral movement of the land into the Gulf enters largely unstudied terrain.

The report, which appeared in December's Geophysical Research Letters, a peer-reviewed journal published by the American Geophysical Union, says the bedrock under heavily populated southeast Louisiana is breaking away at a glacial speed — at the pace fingernails grow.

The southward movement, the study says, is triggered by deep underground faults slipping under the enormous weight of sediment dumped by the Mississippi River.

The slippage, though, is confined to a large egg-shaped area approximately 250 miles long and 180 miles wide that encompasses the delta of the Mississippi, which was built up by river deposits over the past 8,000 years, the report says.

The report was based on data collected between 1995 and 2006 by Global Positioning System stations installed in recent years to better understand the dynamic nature of this delta the French settled in 300 years ago.

"People should not be afraid that we're going to fall into the Gulf. That's not going to happen," said Roy Dokka, lead researcher and executive director of the Center for GeoInformatics at Louisiana State University.

He described the slide into the Gulf as "a kind of avalanche of material, except that it is happening very slowly. It moved about the width of two credit cards this year."

While that may seem trifling in the big picture, Dokka said engineers need to include this reality into their plans for levees, floodgates and other projects.

Windell Curole, a levee and hurricane expert who is on a state board developing a master protection plan, said the phenomenon of sinking, or subsidence, has not been "included in a big way" in the new plan but that planners are "aware of it."

"As we understand it better, we will include it," he said. "You have to be aware of the elevation issues and the rate — these things need to be in the equation."

Flood protection planners have their work cut out for them as they choose between often competing theories about what is causing Louisiana to lose land at alarming rates. Since the 1930s, more than 2,000 square miles of coast sank or eroded.

Some scientists believe oil and natural gas extraction in the middle and late 20th century caused much of the sinking; others say the land is caving in because the Mississippi River and other waterways were straightjacketed by levees, which stopped floodwaters from replenishing the soil.

And some scientists have suggested the debate over subsidence is overstated.

Torbjorn Tornqvist, an associate professor of earth and environmental sciences at Tulane University, found much of the region surprisingly stable and the rate of sinking to be at least 10 times less than previously reported.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070102/ap_on_sc/sinking_louisiana

Jolie Rouge
01-02-2007, 02:19 PM
Divers seal broken Gulf oil pipeline
By JOHN PORRETTO, AP Business Writer
Sun Dec 31, 5:18 PM ET

HOUSTON - Divers sealed a broken oil pipeline Sunday after about 44,500 gallons leaked into the Gulf of Mexico, the Coast Guard said.

The weeklong spill about 30 miles south of Galveston was expected to have minimal effect on the environment. The oil continued to move away from land Sunday and was quickly dispersing, the Coast Guard said.

A portion of the High Island Pipeline System ruptured Dec. 24. The pipeline's owner, Houston-based Plains All American Pipeline LP, shut down the line after detecting a pressure loss in the system.

A ship trying to moor in the area, where the water is about 90 feet deep, might have dropped its anchor on the pipeline, Plains Pipeline spokesman Jordan Janak said.

It was too early to say when the line would be repaired or how much the damage will cost the company, Janak said.

The spill's size was significant, but the crude oil was a relatively light grade and is far from land, according to Greg Pollock, deputy commissioner of the Oil Spill Prevention and Response Program in the Texas General Land Office.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061231/ap_on_re_us/oil_spill

___

On the Net:

Plains All American Pipeline: http://www.paalp.com

Texas Oil Spill Prevention and Response Program: http://www.glo.state.tx.us/oilspill

Jolie Rouge
03-04-2007, 09:36 PM
Coastal clock nears midnight
Sunday, March 04, 2007

The picture on the front page of today's paper shows how little separates New Orleans from the Gulf of Mexico, and the image ought to be seared into the minds of those who care about coastal Louisiana's future.

We are not just close to danger in terms of miles. We are also close -- perilously close -- to the point of no return in dealing with the state's coastal erosion crisis. A three-day series that begins in The Times-Picayune today spells out how little time is left to reverse land loss and the devastating consequences if we do not.

Scientists interviewed for the stories say that we have 10 years or less to create more wetlands than we are losing. If that doesn't happen, the cost of repair and the time needed to accomplish it will be overwhelming.

The urgency of their warnings stands in contrast to the slow pace and insufficient scope of what's been done so far to restore the coast and even what is on the drawing board. For every square mile that the state has created since serious restoration efforts began in 1989, another five have been lost.

Cypress swamp, marshes, ridges and barrier islands reduce storm surge, and the loss of those protective buffers have made our coastline far more vulnerable.

Louisianians need to understand this issue so that we can speak up -- loudly -- about the need to save our homes and communities and the assets that the entire nation relies on, from Gulf fisheries to energy networks. It's a message the rest of the country also needs to appreciate. Reading the stories and graphics that make up "Last Chance" is a good way to begin.


http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/editorials/index.ssf?/base/news-3/1173000030143020.xml&coll=1




LAST CHANCE: The fight to save a disappearing coast
We have 10 years or less the act before the loss of Louisiana's wetlands is irreversible
Sunday, March 04, 2007
By Bob Marshall

The satellite map in Kerry St. Pe's office shows the great sweep of marshes protecting New Orleans from the Gulf in bright red, a warning they will vanish by the year 2040, putting the sea at the city's doorstep.

Coastal scientists produced the map three years ago.

They now know they got it wrong. "People think we still have 20, 30, 40 years left to get this done. They're not even close," said St. Pe, director of the Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary Program, which seeks to save one of the coast's most threatened and strategically vital zones. "Ten years is how much time we have left -- if that."

That new time frame for when the Gulf could reach New Orleans' suburbs sharply reduces projections that have stood for more than three decades. Unless the state rapidly reverses the land loss, coastal scientists say, by the middle of the next decade the cost of repair likely will be too daunting for Congress to accept -- and take far too long to implement under the current approval process.

Interviews with the leading coastal scientists, as well as state and federal officials, brought no disagreement with that stark new prognosis. And while the predictions stand at odds with nearly a decade of official optimism, scientists said the death and destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina prompted them to voice private concerns that have been growing in recent years. "I think that shocked us as much as any other group," said Robert Twilley, director of Louisiana State University's Gulf restoration initiative who has worked on the issue for years. "I think our concern now is that we may have contributed to false optimism."

Unless, within 10 years, the state begins creating more wetlands than it is losing -- a task that will require billions of dollars in complex and politically sensitive projects -- scientists said a series of catastrophes could begin to unfold over the next decade.

In 10 years, at current land-loss rates:

-- Gulf waves that once ended on barrier island beaches far from the city could be crashing on levees behind suburban lawns.

-- The state will be forced to begin abandoning outlying communities such as Lafitte, Golden Meadow, Cocodrie, Montegut, Leeville, Grand Isle and Port Fourchon.

-- The infrastructure serving a vital portion of the nation's domestic energy production will be exposed to the encroaching Gulf.

-- Many levees built to withstand a few hours of storm surge will be standing in water 24 hours a day -- and facing the monster surges that come with tropical storms.

-- Hurricanes approaching from the south will treat the city like beachfront property, crushing it with forces like those experienced by the Mississippi Gulf Coast during Katrina.

The entire nation would reel from the losses. The state's coastal wetlands, the largest in the continental United States, nourish huge industries that serve all Americans, not just residents of southeastern Louisiana. Twenty-seven percent of America's oil and 30 percent of its gas travels through the state's coast, serving half of the nation's refinery capacity, an infrastructure that few other states would welcome and that would take years to relocate. Ports along the Mississippi River, including the giant Port of New Orleans and the Port of South Louisiana in LaPlace, handle 56 percent of the nation's grain shipments. And the estuaries now rapidly turning to open water produce half of the nation's wild shrimp crop and about a third of its oysters and blue claw crabs. Studies show destruction of the wetlands protecting the infrastructure serving those industries would put $103 billion in assets at risk.

Despite such dire threats, the most disturbing concern may be this: Coastal restoration efforts have been under way for two decades, but not a single project capable of reversing the trend currently awaits approval.

The modest restoration efforts already under way have no chance of making a serious impact, experts say. "It's like putting makeup on a corpse," said Mark Schexnayder, a regional coastal adviser with LSU's Sea Grant College Program who has spent 20 years involved in coastal restoration.

Decades after scientists alerted the nation to the problem, the Gulf not only continues to eat into the coast, its appetite remains insatiable: For every square mile the state has created since 1989, when serious restoration efforts started, the Gulf has devoured 5 more miles. Looking at just the wetlands surrounding New Orleans, the prognosis grows even more ominous, because these are the areas with the highest rates of loss on the coast.

Congress provided a note of hope last year, voting the state a permanent 37.5 percent slice of offshore oil revenues for coastal restoration work. But full financing -- some $650 million annually -- won't kick in until 2017. During the critical next decade, the state will be receiving only about $20 million a year, a pittance in the face of a problem that will require tens of billions of dollars to solve. Although the state could borrow against future revenues, scores of logistical and political hurdles remain.

St. Pe and others say 10 years will be too late for many coastal communities; they'll have to be moved within the next decade if serious land-building hasn't already started. "If we aren't building land I can walk on inside of 10 years, we'll be moving communities," St. Pe said. "It's already the witching hour for a lot of these places, and a lot of other places are next."

The demise will not come only as a steady south-to-north movement of shorelines melting away from the pounding of waves. Subsidence and saltwater intrusion will also eat away marshes from the inside. Like a digital image rapidly losing pixels, small holes appear in the marsh and then grow larger as almost every high tide and strong wind carries away more plants and soil. Soon the holes join to form large lagoons, which, in turn, merge with nearby lakes and bays.

That reality becomes disturbingly clear from the window of an airplane. Vast sections of the state's majestic marshes, once spread across the sportsman's paradise like a thin veil of green lace, have been swallowed by the sea. The water now pushes against the city's boundaries and spreads unbroken to the southern horizon.

Jolie Rouge
03-04-2007, 09:37 PM
Too little, too late

The arrival of a tipping point in the coast's demise has long been predicted.

As early as the 1970s, researchers had documented the scope of the state's coastal land loss. They knew the causes: a combination of levee construction, which prevented rivers from rebuilding deltas, and the thousands of canals dredged across the fragile wetlands, primarily at the behest of oil, gas and shipping.

Although the erosion imperiled the entire coast, it especially threatened the wetlands around New Orleans, where loss rates in the 1970s soared above 50 square miles per year. Whole sections of the Terrebonne and Barataria estuaries south and west of New Orleans and the Lake Borgne-Breton Sound area to the east of the city rapidly washed out to sea.

Despite that knowledge, the state did not officially commit to coastal restoration until 1989, with the creation of a trust fund to pay for projects. But during the next 15 years, most proposals were stifled by lack of financing and the conflicting concerns of competing wetland user groups such as commercial fishers and oyster harvesters, the oil and gas industry, property owners and developers.

Since the 1970s, scientists at state and federal agencies have supported a parade of legislation they hoped would finance various plans for a goal collectively known as "coastal restoration." Yet they knew the projects they advocated -- usually unsuccessfully -- would not actually stop the loss.

That includes even the massive $14 billion Louisiana Coastal Area Plan developed by the state and the Army Corps of Engineers five years ago.

Coastal advocates were appalled when the Bush administration promised only $1.9 billion to start the program two years ago. Yet St. Pe and others involved in developing the plan now concede that even if the state got the $14 billion tomorrow, the cumulative impact would not come close to building wetlands at a rate faster than they are being lost. "Everyone who has been involved in this has known for 20 years the projects we were involved in wouldn't reverse this trend," St. Pe said. "But you didn't want to speak out because you were committed at least to getting your idea -- something -- done."

Katrina has sparked an outbreak of frank urgency among scientists. "I'm concerned we've built a level of expectation of restoration among residents in many vulnerable communities that is simply not warranted by what we can deliver," said Twilley, who anticipates the state soon will have to give up on restoring the marshes protecting many communities. "People have a right to know that," he said.

Years of inaction

By the time Katrina struck in 2005, the few meager state and federal restoration efforts that escaped political purgatory had not only failed to reverse land loss, they didn't even slow it down. The impact of the big storm may finally have galvanized public opinion, but those years of inaction have taken a toll that could prove fatal to the hopes of rebuilding critical basins near the city, experts now say.

For nearly 30 years, those hopes depended on moving sediment from the rivers into the remains of the wetlands infrastructure, what UNO coastal scientist Denise Reed calls "the skeleton" of the system that once stretched from the city south to Grand Isle.

The skeleton included the natural levee ridges of ancient bayous, barrier islands, reefs and large marsh islands, all of which could trap and hold sediment and create a foundation for land growth. Even submerged, those "bones" would have provided critical help. But as the decades passed without action, many of those bones have been eroded by the relentless pounding of waves and the subsidence of the delta. Bays that once could trap sediment now are just open bodies of water, growing larger and deeper by the year. In 10 more years, experts said, the size of many bays might require an amount of fill that would be difficult to finance. "Sure, with enough money, you could build projects large enough to build land in that environment, but that isn't likely to be forthcoming," said Donald Boesch, a New Orleans native and expert on the state's estuaries who serves as president of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. "That's why I say we have 10 years left to get this done," he said, echoing St. Pe and others.

Losing Barataria basins

No area is more imperiled than the wetlands of the Barataria-Terrebonne basins, directly south of New Orleans -- the weakest link in the metro area's hurricane defense.

While engineers say they can protect the city's northern flank by controlling storm surge into Lake Pontchartrain with floodgates or other barriers across key passes, no such option exists to the south. The Barataria estuary is simply too large. It stretches in a wide arc along the Mississippi River's west bank, from the freshwater marshes behind Marrero and Westwego, south past Lafitte to Grand Isle, including Belle Chasse, Port Sulphur, Empire and Venice near the mouth of the Mississippi.

Before 1940, Barataria was a trusted storm-fighter, an almost solid mass of cypress swamp, marsh, barrier islands and ridges providing nearly 80 miles of hurricane buffer between the city and the open Gulf.

Since then, the Barataria basins have suffered the greatest rates of land loss in the state. Maps of the region are filled with names of communities that no longer exist, and once-vast marsh islands that are now open water.

Anglers like Joe Courcelle of Jesuit Bend routinely find themselves operating their fishing boats over spots their charts show as solid land. "We're always fishing 'used-to-bes,' " he said. "This used to be Bird Island. This used to be Manila Village."

The quickening pace of erosion has been impossible to ignore for some scientists involved in the fight, because it has literally reached their office doors. Any strong southerly wind now floods roads and yards in communities such as Montegut and Cocodrie along Louisiana 56 in Terrebonne Parish -- little more than 35 miles from the French Quarter.

That has forced researchers at the Louisiana University Marine Consortium in Cocodrie to take boats to work, and the erosion has made life ever more precarious in communities once separated from the Gulf by miles of marsh. "We can't plant gardens anymore because when we get a south wind, the tide comes out of the bayou and covers the yards and the roads," said Carolyn Johnson, who has lived in Cocodrie for 30 years. "We used to only see that with hurricanes."

Such tidal inundation has become a fact of life for almost every community outside hurricane protection levees south and west of the city. The imperiled wetlands to the east offer only slightly more protection to St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes. Although the land base there better resists erosion, projects such as the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet shipping channel have weakened that buffer and exposed large developed areas to floods. "The enemy is at the gates," said Jimmy Johnston, who recently retired as chief of the spatial analysis branch of the U.S. Geological Service National Wetlands Research Center, which uses maps and satellite photos to track changes in landscape. "The Barataria estuary is just a disaster. Anyone who thinks we've got 10 years left over there is dreaming."

Aggressive advance

Since scientists first addressed the problem in the 1970s, they have stressed the need for quick action because of the aggressiveness of the sea's inland advance.

As the amount of open water grows, winds build larger waves that strike shorelines with greater force, increasing the rate of erosion. And that results in exponential acceleration: The larger the problem gets, the faster it gets even larger.

St. Pe uses a brief animation that graphically depicts the calamity now unfolding south of the city. Marshes that appear solid in the early 1900s are pocked with holes that slowly grow larger until the 1990s, when the pace dramatically speeds up. By 2020, the expanse of open water is almost unbroken from Lafitte to Grand Isle, Venice to Golden Meadow. "That's where we are right now," St. Pe said of the last 10 seconds in the animation. "We had opportunities in the 1980s to really stop this, to get ahead of the curve. And people still don't seem to realize this isn't something we can wait on. While we were arguing over what to do, the process was gaining speed."

. . . . . . .

Bob Marshall can be reached at bmarshall@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3539.

Staff writers Mark Schleifstein and Matthew Brown contributed to this article.

http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/base/news-7/1172875803168190.xml&coll=1

Jolie Rouge
03-07-2007, 10:31 PM
The Times-Picayune Predicts the Future, Again
Harry Shearer Wed Mar 7, 8:37 PM ET

In 2002, New Orleans' only daily ran a series that predicted the chilling results of a major hurricane hitting the Crescent City. It was not pretty, but it was not what actually happened in 2005, when a less-than-ultimate storm sideswiped the city, but the hurricane protection system gave way. Now the paper takes on the bigger issue of vanishing wetlands in Louisiana in a five-part series running this week. As some commenters to my posts have consistently pointed out, it's foolish to build a better levee system without a serious, expensive, systematic commitment to restoring the wetlands that have disappeared, basically, on our watch. Somebody ginned up the political support for federal money to "rebuild the Everglades", so the job of ginning up the political support for rebuilding the Louisiana wetlands could well start with people reading this series.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/huffpost/20070308/cm_huffpost/042902;_ylt=ApxoOXOyk8nTfRuto4_t.Mz8B2YD

Jolie Rouge
07-16-2007, 09:37 PM
Saving coast a long battle
Advocate Opinion page staff
Published: Jul 16, 2007

The recent death of Mike Dunne, a longtime reporter for The Advocate, marks the passing of a great champion of Louisiana’s endangered coastline. This past spring, Dunne received the first America’s Wetland Conservationist of the Year award for his stories on threats to Louisiana’s coast. He was also the co-author, with Bevil Knapp, of “America’s Wetland: Louisiana’s Vanishing Coast.”

The week that Dunne died, the continuing urgency of Louisiana’s coastal problems was underscored in a roundtable discussion of the issue on the public affairs show, “Focus on Louisiana.”

Louisiana is in a race against the clock to preserve its coastal marshes, the show’s panel of experts agreed. The coastal restoration episode of “Focus on Louisiana” was the sixth in the nine-part public affairs series, sponsored by the Council for a Better Louisiana and Cox Communications. Information about the series is available on the Internet at http://www.cabl.org or at http://www.cox.com/batonrouge.

Experts estimate the state loses a football field of marshland every 38 minutes. Since 1930, the amount of wetlands lost in Louisiana has been greater than the entire land mass of Rhode Island. Hurricanes Katrina and Rita alone wiped out 217 square miles of wetlands.

Sidney Coffee, executive assistant to the governor for coastal activities, told fellow panelists that the state’s comprehensive plan for coastal restoration and protection will take at least 30 years and as much as $55 billion to complete.

University of New Orleans geology and geophysics Professor Denise Reed said a lot of mistakes made during the past century helped create the coastal land-loss problem. Levees were built to stop flooding from the Mississippi River, which limited the river’s ability to bring land-replenishing sediment to coastal areas. Channels were carved into the marshes to accommodate commercial fishing boats, and oil and gas barges and tankers.

“The marshes are hanging on by their fingernails at the minute,” Reed said. “We have to change that. We need to get the river back replenishing the system so they don’t have to hang on by their fingernails — so they can be healthy, vibrant systems for generations to come.”

The economic and ecological case for preserving Louisiana’s wetlands is compelling.

Louisiana’s wetlands produce more than 30 percent of the nation’s commercial fisheries, and they support the production of more than 25 percent of all the oil and gas consumed in the United States. Ninety-five percent of all the marine species in the Gulf of Mexico spend at least part of their life cycle in Louisiana’s wetlands. Louisiana’s coastal marshes host more than 5 million migratory waterfowl, as well as 70 rare, threatened or endangered species.

But beyond the statistics, the loss of coastal areas also exacts a deeply human toll. Panelist Stephen Smith, an environmental engineer from Houma, said the land loss already is affecting the day-to-day lives of ordinary people.

“Frankly, it’s heartbreaking, when you leave Baton Rouge and you drive to Montegut to see a guy like Roland Pitre,” Smith said. “He’s a guy I was with two days ago who’s walking in water in the parking lot of his business, literally, on a daily basis, because the wind is blowing out of the south. How does it feel? It’s heartbreaking.”

Reed said scientists have concluded that there’s a future for Louisiana’s coastal marshes, but action must be taken now.

Recent advances in federal funding for coastal restoration are a good first step. But Louisiana must make coastal restoration a consistent priority. Otherwise, there might come a day, quite soon, when the cause will be irreversibly lost.


http://www.2theadvocate.com/opinion/8521542.html

Jolie Rouge
06-20-2008, 09:32 PM
Floodwaters to widen 'dead zone' in Gulf of Mexico
By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer
Fri Jun 20, 4:02 PM ET

WASHINGTON - Floodwaters loaded with farm runoff are heading down the Mississippi River, and scientists fear the deluge will dramatically increase this summer's dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, covering an area the size of Maryland.

The dead zone is a region of the gulf that becomes starved for oxygen during much of the summer and cannot support fish or other sea life.

There are hundreds of dead zones around the world that wreak havoc with marine ecology and cut off vast areas for commercial fishing. The zone in the gulf is the largest in the Western Hemisphere.

"It's going to be a very interesting summer out there just because of this," said Steven DiMarco, a professor of oceanography at Texas A&M University. "The last time something like this happened, we did see a huge difference" in the size of the dead zone from one year to the next.

The zone off the Louisiana and Texas coasts was first seen in 1972. Its size varies each year, but it has tended to grow over the decades, with a major jump in 1993, after the last big Mississippi River flood.

That flood made the oxygen problem substantially worse, which may happen again this year, DiMarco said Friday.

Even before the flooding, scientists had predicted that the gulf this summer would see its largest-ever dead zone — more than 10,000 square miles. Now experts say it's likely to be even bigger.

Oxygen in the dead zone is depleted by excess nutrients, mostly nitrates from farm fertilizer runoff, that cause algae blooms. After the algae dies, bacteria on the bottom feast on the remains, removing crucial oxygen from the water.

The dead zone in the gulf forms in early summer and lasts through early fall.

This year's massive floods will bring a heavier load of fertilizer into the gulf, DiMarco said.

But it's more than the nitrates. The trillions of gallons of floodwater help trap the oxygen-depleted water near the gulf floor. The fresh water, which stays at the surface because it is less dense, forms a physical barrier that keeps oxygen in the air from mixing with the water covering the dead zone area, DiMarco said.

Scientists are just starting to study how the increasing size of the dead zone is affecting fish.

Think of a giant corridor from Des Moines to Chicago and "you took a great big piece of Saran Wrap over all that area and sucked all the oxygen out," said Nancy Rabalais, executive director of the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium. "You would have a big problem."

Even without the flooding, signs from early spring flooding and heavy fertilizer use were pointing to a record year for the dead zone, said Louisiana State University professor R. Eugene Turner. Earlier this month, using data from before the floods, Turner predicted the zone would break the 10,000-square-mile mark. Last year it covered 7,900 square miles.

Scientists are also worried that the jump in corn production triggered by heightened demand for ethanol fuel could worsen the dead zone because of the increased use of fertilizers. The big question is whether it will make the zone larger, cause it to last longer or become more oxygen-starved, or some combination of those, DiMarco said.

In May, nearly 500 million pounds of nitrates flowed down the Mississippi, Rabalais said. The algae bloom — the first step of dead zones — started a month early this year, in February, she said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080620/ap_on_sc/sci_midwest_flooding_dead_zone;_ylt=Aip3MFyClfCdBk unAQbr.KOs0NUE

Jolie Rouge
07-23-2008, 10:13 AM
Researcher says Gulf dead zone bigger than ever
By MICHAEL GRACZYK, Associated Press Writer
Wed Jul 23, 5:39 AM ET



HOUSTON - A "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico off the Texas-Louisiana coast this year is likely to be the biggest ever and last longer than ever before, with marine life affected for hundreds of miles, a scientist warned.

"It's definitely the worst we've seen in the last five years," said Steve DiMarco, a Texas A&M University professor of oceanography who for 16 years has studied the Gulf of Mexico dead zone, so named because the oxygen-depleted water can kill marine life.

The phenomenon is caused when salt water loses large amounts of oxygen, a condition known as hypoxia that is typically associated with an area off the Louisiana coast at the mouth of the Mississippi River. The fresh water and salt water don't mix well, keeping oxygen from filtering through to the sea bottom, which causes problems for fish, shrimp, crabs and clams.

This year's dead zone has been aggravated by flood runoff from heavy spring rains and additional runoff moving into the Gulf from record floods along the Mississippi.

DiMarco, joined by researchers from Texas A&M and the University of Georgia, just returned from an examination of 74 sites between Terrebonne and Cameron, La. He said the most severe hypoxia levels were recorded in the mid-range depths, between 20 and 30 feet, as well as near the bottom of the sea floor at about 60 feet.

Some of the worst hypoxic levels occurred in the western Gulf toward the state line.

"We saw quite a few areas that had little or no oxygen at all at that site," DiMarco said Tuesday. "This dead zone area is the strongest we've seen since 2004, and it's very likely the worst may be still to come.

"Since most of the water from the Midwest is still making its way down to the Gulf, we believe that wide area of hypoxia will persist through August and likely until September, when it normally ends."

Last year, DiMarco discovered a similar dead zone off the Texas coast where the rain-swollen Brazos River emptied into the Gulf.

The zone off Louisiana reached a record 7,900 square miles in 2002. A recent estimate from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Louisiana State University shows the zone, which has been monitored for about 25 years, could exceed 8,800 square miles this year, an area roughly the size of New Jersey.

DiMarco said a tropical storm or hurricane likely would have no impact on this year's zone, believed to be caused by nutrient pollution from fertilizers that empty into rivers and eventually reach the Gulf.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080723/ap_on_sc/dead_zone;_ylt=AkA434jBGmYyTu6GA7Sz7XGs0NUE

Jolie Rouge
07-28-2008, 09:02 PM
Hurricane Dolly may have shrunk Gulf 'dead zone'
By JANET McCONNAUGHEY, Associated Press Writer
Mon Jul 28, 7:57 PM ET

NEW ORLEANS - The oxygen-starved "dead zone" that forms every summer in the Gulf of Mexico is a bit smaller than predicted this year because Hurricane Dolly stirred up the water, a scientist reported Monday.

There is too little oxygen to support sea life for about 8,000 square miles — just under the record of 8,006 square miles recorded in 2001, said Nancy Rabalais, head of the head of the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium. "If it were not for Hurricane Dolly, the size of the Dead Zone would have been substantially larger," she said in a news release sent from the consortium's research vessel, the Pelican, as she returned from her annual mapping cruise. Rabalais measures the area during the same period each year.

Scientists had predicted that flood runoff would bring so much fertilizer and other nutrients into the Gulf that the area of low oxygen would be a record 8,300 to 8,800 square miles. Those nutrients feed microscopic plants at the surface, which die and fall to the bottom. Their decomposition uses up the salty layer's oxygen.

Additionally, the fresh water from the Mississippi River and salt water in the gulf don't mix well and form layers, keeping oxygen from filtering through to the sea bottom. The oxygen-depleted, or hypoxic, waters can be deadly to fish, shrimp, crabs and clams.

The Mississippi River's nitrogen levels in May were 37 percent higher than last year and the highest since measurements began in 1970, Rabalais said.

Based on that, R. Eugene Turner of Louisiana State University predicted the oxygen-starved area would cover 8,800 square miles, and Donald Scavia of the University of Michigan estimated it would be 8,300 to 8,700 square miles.

But Dolly's winds and waves mixed up the layers of water, stirring in oxygen, especially along the western and shoreward areas, Rabalais said.

Another load of nutrients may be headed toward the dead zone as runoff from the mid-June floods in Iowa reach the Gulf of Mexico, said Steven F. DiMarco, an associate professor in the oceanography department at Texas A&M who also studies the dead zone. "I expect that pulse to be making its way out in a few weeks. It could extend this year's hypoxic zone or dead zone further into the summer — maybe even in September," he said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080728/ap_on_re_us/dead_zone;_ylt=AnmDJ_GYdMkxiKP4yQVxaFxH2ocA


On the Net:

LUMCON hypoxia information: http://www.gulfhypoxia.net/

Rabalais maps: http://www.gulfhypoxia.net/research/shelfwidecruises/2008/

and http://www.gulfhypoxia.net/research/shelfwidecruises/2008/gmap.asp

NOAA map (scroll down): http://ecowatch.ncddc.noaa.gov/hypoxia

Jolie Rouge
09-19-2008, 08:17 PM
Future Fury: Hurricane Effects Will Only Get Worse
Andrea Thompson Senior Writer LiveScience.com
Fri Sep 19, 7:02 AM ET

The Caribbean and Gulf Coast have seen a spate of devastating hurricanes in recent years that have cost billions of dollars and thousands of lives. As residents recover from the latest hits, they may wonder about the potential for future Gustavs and Ritas; Ikes and Katrinas.

Hurricanes, of course, are nothing new to the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico, where tropical storms form between June and November each year. But many factors, both natural and man-made, can affect the number, strength, size and impact of the storms that form each season. For example, the recent surge in storms followed an almost two-decade lull that was part of a natural cycle in hurricane formation.

During that lull, new coastal residents built homes in what they thought was a paradise. But now they've found out just how susceptible they are to nature's wrath. And it looks like the situation might only get worse.

Coastal build-up

In 2003, more than half the U.S. population (or about 153 million people) lived along the Gulf and Southeastern U.S. coastline - an increase of 33 million people from 1980 - and that number is just expected to keep rising.

The buildup of these communities in recent decades and the environmental damage that development has caused exacerbate the impact of hurricanes. "There's been an explosion of population along our coast," said Amanda Staudt, a climate scientist with the National Wildlife Federation (NWF). "That's just putting a lot more people in harm's way."

This is particularly true in Florida, Texas and North Carolina, where populations are increasing the fastest. Hurricanes are especially a threat for homes right on the beach or on barrier islands, such as Galveston, because they receive the full brunt of a hurricane's storm surge.

Coastal features such as barrier islands and wetlands act as natural protection against a hurricane's storm surge, slowing it down and absorbing some of the impact. Studies have shown that every mile of wetlands reduces storm surge by about 3 to 9 inches and every acre reduces the cost of damages from a storm by $3,300, Staudt said. "Our wetlands and barrier islands ... are our first line of defense," she said.

But the development boom in coastal areas has damaged these natural defenses, putting coastal residents even more at risk. "The more we develop, the more we lose," Staudt told LiveScience.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimates that since the 1700s, the lower 48 states have lost more than half of their wetlands. While not all of that acreage loss is right along the coast, and some is likely a result of natural changes along the shoreline, a good chunk is due to development.

For instance, some of the Katrina damage to New Orleans was partly a result of the damage to the protective wetlands along Louisiana's coast. Development and subsidence, or outright sinking, of the state's coastline today mean that Louisiana loses an area of wetlands equivalent to the size of 32 football fields every day, according to the NWF.

Many hurricane experts have warned for years against destructive coastal development and imprudent policies that encourage people to build in coastal areas, but that often doesn't stop the building.

Warmer seas

Meanwhile, the oceans are growing warmer. Global ocean temperatures have risen by about 0.2 degrees Fahrenheit (0.1 degrees Celsius) in the last 30 years. And hurricanes are fueled by the warm, moist air over the tropical Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico. The warmer the ocean surface, the more energy is available to fuel a storm's ferocious winds.

Scientists have predicted that as global warming continues to heat up the ocean, hurricanes could become more frequent, more intense or both, and several scientists think that change is already evident.

As sea surface temperatures rise, they provide more fuel to the convection that drives the swirling storms. This added energy could notch up the speed of hurricanes' winds (though several scientists say the winds can only increase so much). One recent study suggested that the strongest hurricanes in particular would get a bump from warming waters.

The rainfall brought by hurricanes could also increase because as the Earth's atmosphere also warms, it can hold more moisture. Studies have shown that one of the most damaging parts of a storm can actually be the rain it dumps on inland areas. Rising sea levels could increase the damage wrought to coastal areas by a hurricane's storm surge.

Warmer water, and more of it, could also mean more opportunities for storms to form. Another recent study suggested that global warming could extend the hurricane season; as the warm water areas in the Atlantic expand, there could be more opportunities for storm formation, particularly early in the season.

Natural cycles

Of course, the changes man has made to coastlines and the climate system aren't the only thing affecting the intensity of any particular hurricane season. Mother Nature provides plenty of variation as well.

Natural fluctuations in the climate that occur over a matter of years, such as El Nino and its sister La Nina, can also affect how busy the Atlantic hurricane season is.

El Nino events, which occur when tropical Pacific waters become warmer, can change the flow of prevailing air currents and stifle hurricane development in the Atlantic. Forecasters think that an El Nino event was the reason for the calm 2006 hurricane season, which came after two of the busiest years for hurricanes on record. La Ninas (when tropical Pacific water become cooler) typically mean more hurricanes.

Another natural cycle, called the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, can affect hurricane frequency over several decades through changes in sea surface temperatures, and is thought to be linked to the relative lull in hurricanes during the 1970s and 80s.

While natural cycles can affect hurricane activity from year-to-year or even decade-to-decade, most climate scientists think that global warming will continue to fuel these storms, and accompanied by the increasing coastal population and environmental degradation, lead to the "increasing destructive power of storms," Staudt said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20080919/sc_livescience/futurefuryhurricaneeffectswillonlygetworse;_ylt=Av kzC.rTXV32gvoPTbxggvWs0NUE

Jolie Rouge
09-20-2008, 08:13 PM
Lessons from disasters like Ike
By the Monitor's Editorial Board
Fri Sep 19, 5:00 AM ET

Nearly a week after Galveston Island took a severe beating from hurricane Ike, a Kroger grocery store has finally opened for business, grilling up fajitas for its employees. With the Texas island still not ready to take back evacuees, the open store is at least one encouraging sign of normalcy.

For that is the aim of rescue and relief workers, government officials, neighbors, and perfect strangers who all assist in the aftermath of any disaster – to help residents return to as normal a life as possible.

But normalcy has its downside in America's hazard-prone areas. If it means rebuilding exactly as everything was before the hurricane, fire, or earthquake, then business-as-usual is itself hazardous. The country has learned to do some key things differently in the wake of several years of weather whammies. One of them is to adopt stricter building codes that save lives and money.

New building and landscaping standards spared five communities from San Diego's fierce fires last year. In 1992, when the worst mainland hurricane in US history slammed into Florida, 27 Miami-area houses built to hurricane-resistant standards suffered no structural damage, while other homes nearby were flattened.

Florida now has the most stringent hurricane building codes in the country. After Katrina and Rita in 2005, Gulf states caught on, with Louisiana, for instance, passing a statewide code. Structures along the Mississippi coast are being rebuilt on stilts.

Good job, except for this huge oversight. The rebuilding, with few exceptions, is taking place in the same spots that were wiped out. As naturally as snow falls, people want to build in warm places with beautiful beach vistas – no matter that they're on a vulnerable barrier island such as Galveston.

One thing that would discourage the pounding of pylons in obvious danger zones is market-priced property insurance. It's telling that private insurers have for the most part pulled out of the Gulf coastal areas. As of Nov. 30, State Farm won't renew even existing policies for customers within 1,000 feet of the shoreline.

Customers have therefore swarmed to subsidized state insurance programs, and, of course, should these fail, there is always the National Flood Insurance Program. Or not. Congress is wrangling over renewal of the program, which expires Sept. 30. Sadly, both House and Senate bills perpetuate low-cost insurance that only encourages more building in dangerous zones.

In the absence of correcting market forces, populations along the coastal counties of the Atlantic and Gulf coasts have popped up like beach umbrellas. In 1980, about 67 million people lived in these counties, according to the US Census Bureau. In 2006, just over 88 million. And little has discouraged developers – at least before the housing bust – from marching up the tinder-dry hills of California.

State and local governments should either wean themselves from taxpayer-subsidized, low-cost insurance – or block off the most vulnerable areas. It is possible. After the 1977 Red River flood, Grand Forks, in North Dakota, marked off a "no build" zone near the river. Two decades ago, South Carolina began a gradual retreat from the sea – redrawing its baseline at the shore every 10 years.

Now in Texas, the land commissioner, Jerry Patterson, is proposing that new coastal construction be set back at 60 times the erosion rate – for example, 60 feet for every foot of erosion. Before Ike, he was blasted by local officials who said the restrictions would erode development and resulting tax revenue.

With so much washed out to sea or piled up as debris, Galveston – and other communities – should be welcoming Mr. Patterson's proposal. To prepare for disasters, America should not just batten down, but step back.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20080919/cm_csm/ehurricanes;_ylt=AjRdL7hK_6Ax12HSz69i43is0NUE


proposing that new coastal construction be set back at 60 times the erosion rate – for example, 60 feet for every foot of erosion.

Sounds good except for ....

a result of the damage to the protective wetlands along Louisiana's coast. Development and subsidence, or outright sinking, of the state's coastline today mean that Louisiana loses an area of wetlands equivalent to the size of 32 football fields every day

Jolie Rouge
01-20-2009, 11:52 AM
excellent resource :
http://www.coastalamerica.gov/text/pubs/consensus/fragfringe.pdf

Jolie Rouge
12-13-2009, 09:01 PM
Louisiana Indian village holds out against plea to move
By Cain Burdeau, Associated Press Writer
Sun Dec 13, 3:42 pm ET

ISLE DE JEAN CHARLES, La. – A day in the life of Edison Dardar starts with a caterwaul of a shout. A yawlp. His chest puffs up: "Yay-hoooo!" Morning cries down the road greet him. "Wa-hoooo!" .... "Yaaaah!" .... "Aaaahh-eee." The Indian fisherman smiles. His cousins and nephews are doing well.

Soon enough, roosters and dogs join the morning chorus, and the island is awake.

"It keeps your chest clear," the 60-year-old barrel-chested fisherman rationalizes. "Over in Bourg, if I did that, they'd probably put me in jail."

Bourg is a tidy Cajun bayou town a few miles north of Dardar's hurricane-smashed Indian village in the marsh where holdout families are being urged to move to by a tribal chief, scientists and public officials.

Why? Because life on this spit of soggy land 6 miles from the Gulf of the Mexico may soon be impossible for the interrelated families with French, Choctaw, Houma, Biloxi and Chitimacha bloodlines that go back 170 years when a Frenchman came here with his Choctaw wife and named the island after his father, Jean Charles.

The road to the island is caving in. Hurricanes are flooding homes more often. The Gulf gets closer every year. Isle de Jean Charles is at risk of disappearing under the Gulf of Mexico.

But to Edison Dardar and his kin, the name Bourg sounds like a prison. "What am I going to do there? Wake up and look at the road?" Edison Dardar shrugs. "No, not me. I'm not moving. This island is more beautiful than ever. This island is a gold mine for me."

He casts for shrimp at sunset behind his house. Sips coffee at Oxcelia's, his sister's place up the road, in the mornings. Checks in on Leodilla, his blind, 90-year-old mother who's old enough to remember the huts made of mud and grass, or bousillage. His wife, Elizabeth, is content watching old Westerns like "Bonanza" and feeding her chicks. A son still lives at a home they raised on 12-foot stilts after Hurricane Andrew in 1992 flooded the island. It wobbles like Jell-o when someone walks from one room to the next.

With a bad limp from 40 years of backbreaking work dredging for oysters, Edison Dardar hobbles over to a handmade plywood sign on the road through the village. He stands next to it proudly. It reads: "Island is not for sale. If you don't like the island stay off. Don't give up fight for you rights. It's worth saving. Edison Dardar Jr."

"My son wrote it," Dardar, who cannot read and write himself, says with a grin.

___

From New Orleans, it's a long road to this alligator- and mosquito-infested marsh island. The road goes past the city's outskirts, postwar suburbs and po' boy sandwich shops; it sails across Cajun farmlands of sugar cane fields, moss-draped oaks and roadside watermelon vendors. You must drive beyond the inland fishing towns connected by clunky drawbridges and bayous bobbing with shrimp trawlers and hyacinth.

Push on, and the canopy thins out, the road crosses a levee and enters the wide open expanse of marsh tidelands that run for miles out to the Gulf of Mexico.

An end-of-the-world nausea sets in on the narrow road that rolls across open water toward Isle de Jean Charles. A crooked yellow sign warns: "Water On Road." When high tides and a stiff southern wind combine, the road is slick with water. Half the road caved in after last year's hurricane season.

A gut check hits as the road wends through the island. Half the houses are empty shells, blown apart by hurricanes. Most of the others are raised high on pilings — not for the view, but to keep sofas, beds and Grandma's photos out of the Gulf's regular inundations. The church is gone, the store is gone, most of the children too.

The islanders are living the doomsday scenario that many researchers say awaits Miami, Houston, Savannah, New York: A rising sea at the doorstep.

The village sits outside the main levee systems of south Louisiana, and in the middle of some of the fastest eroding wetlands in the world. For the past 80 years, oil drilling, logging and the Army Corps of Engineers' levee building on the Mississippi River have doomed the island. The knockout is the combination of sea level rise and intense hurricanes.

"In the 1980s, I asked someone to take me to look at Fala, an important Indian settlement, and he took me out there in a boat and said, 'Look down,'" recalled Jack Campisi, an anthropologist who's worked to get south Louisiana's American Indians recognized by the federal government. So far, the Bureau of Indian Affairs has shot down their petitions. "What's at stake is a viable ethnic identity. It's easier to do if you have a federal relationship."

Many tribes moved into the swamps to escape enslavement or forced banishment after Congress passed the 1830 Indian Removal Act. Today, there are about 20,000 American Indians on the coast. Until the 1950s, most Indians lived in isolation with limited interaction with whites. Old timers recall barefoot children scampering into the woods to hide when the first cars rattled onto the island in the 1950s.

Before the coast was overrun by the oil boom and shipyards, the Indians lived off the land, growing small gardens and raising livestock. Fish, oysters, crawfish and crabs were staples. For medicine, they relied on plants. There was "bon blanc" tea made from a leafy plant. Medicinal teas were gotten from boiling "citronelle," "venera," a Houma word for sage, and the bark of the "bois connu" tree.

"We had no running water. We washed our clothes in the bayou," recalled Hilda Naquin, a 95-year-old Houma woman who grew up between mud walls covered in newspapers and under a thatched palmetto roof. "We didn't have much to eat. My grandpa used to plant a garden. Thank God for that. Our oven was made outside with the dirt and mud."

This isolation was imposed, as stories of discrimination attest. Indian children were barred from schools until the 1960s and called "sabines," a derogatory term.

"My daddy couldn't go get a haircut up the bayou. He couldn't get a hamburger in the town of Golden Meadow," said Laura Billiot, Hilda Naquin's daughter. "The prejudices are still there today; not as bad, but they're still there."

__

( continues ...)

Jolie Rouge
12-13-2009, 09:02 PM
Albert Naquin, one of two tribal chiefs recognized by the islanders, stands on the sinking road surveying his old village. The sound of water laps at the road and fills the silences between his words.

"They had a small lake over yonder, just north of here. Wonder Lake. Now it's all open water," Naquin says.

He resembles a defeated general surveying a battlefield. The contours of the past — smoke rising from thatched-roof homes, barefoot children splashing in crawfish ponds, fishermen poking through the marshes in pirogues — shimmer on the flat marsh horizon in front of him. But these are only memories now. For him, it's time to move inland and reconstitute the tribe behind the safety of levees.

"We didn't have any money. We lived off the land. We had our own cows, we had our pigs, we had chickens, and they were fishermen, and they also raised the garden. So, during the Depression, we didn't even feel that at all," Naquin says.

The idea of moving to Bourg was Albert Naquin's idea. He's talking with state and federal officials about a $12 million plan to buy a tract of land for 60 homes, in return for not fixing the road.

But his intentions are regarded with skepticism and open hostility by the families that remain on the island. Naquin's family moved off the island after a hurricane destroyed their home in the 1970s.

"Sometimes I feel like Moses," he says. "But Moses had something to go by. I don't have anything. I mean, I'm just an old Indian guy from down here."

He shakes his head. "I'm taking a beating."

Isle de Jean Charles is not the first Indian village to face relocation because of erosion and sea level rise. These factors are combining to force the relocation of seaside villages like Newtok, Shishmaref, Unalakleet and Kivalina in Alaska.

"This is not something that is happening just in Louisiana and it is not something that is theoretical," said Robert Young, the director of the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, N.C. "If we don't at least talk about relocation, nature will make those decisions for us, and they won't necessarily be the ones we want to make."

Since Hurricane Katrina, Louisiana officials and the Army Corps of Engineers have set about drawing lines across south Louisiana to determine what can and cannot be saved from sea level rise and delta erosion.

"They drew this broad red line, and said the entire area below the red line would be at risk," said Michael Dardar, a diesel mechanic, tribal historian and a leader with the United Houma Nation. "Every major Houma community is below that red line. Lower Dulac, Pointe Aux Chenes, Isle de Jean Charles. Our whole way of life is in danger."

This bleak future has been the topic of a recent series of community meetings, called "How Safe, How Soon?"

And at each meeting, Brenda Dardar, the principal chief of the Houmas, has gone in with the same message:

"We need to make sure that we can adapt, whether it's elevating our homes, building smart or moving to a different location. Our history's important, our culture's important and preserving our communities is important."

___

Isle de Jean Charles may be on the wrong side of the line being drawn across the map of south Louisiana. But defiance here seems immovable. The Dardars, Naquins, Billiots and Verdins aren't going easily.

"I wouldn't move. No way. I don't care if this place floods time and again. Nobody but me is living on this land," says T.J. Dardar, a fisherman and one of Edison's cousins, squatting outside his dilapidated wooden house. It's missing siding, needs a coat of paint; piles of beer cans, burnt trash and assorted junk lie around it. A heap of asphalt shingles, with a couple of television boxes thrown in, slumps into the canal across the road.

Notwithstanding the flooding, dangerous road and declining sense of community, it's not hard to see why people want to stay.

"You can do anything you want on this island — catch your crabs, your shrimp, dry your shrimp," Edison Dardar says. "I see nothing changed, me," he says on a walk through his village. So what, he says, if there is now water where he once saw grass? "We were killing duck (when there was land). Now we're killing shrimp. If you're hungry, you make a living."

Back home, his tangy shrimp are drying on a tarp behind his house. Chickens squawk. He mashes a piece of shrimp between his teeth. "They still need to dry some more."

Time slows down here. The plop of a fish brings a great silence of the marsh. Dardar rests for a moment and the symphony of frogs, bugs and birds comes back.

"Make some good gumbo, jambalaya. Talk about good, partner."

"Leave? For what?" he says.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091213/ap_on_re_us/us_isle_de_jean_charles;_ylt=AuZBMVdCFvmKuObhJw_TV TAo_aF4;_ylu=X3oDMTNjbHAxYWFrBGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMDkxM jEzL3VzX2lzbGVfZGVfamVhbl9jaGFybGVzBGNjb2RlA21vc3R wb3B1bGFyBGNwb3MDNQRwb3MDNQRzZWMDeW5fdG9wX3N0b3JpZ XMEc2xrA2xhaW5kaWFudmlsbA--

Jolie Rouge
06-16-2010, 08:04 AM
Gulf Coast welcomes Obama's pledge to restore land
Cain Burdeau, Associated Press Writer – Wed Jun 16, 5:45 am ET
NEW ORLEANS – After 50 years of watching wetlands created by the fertile Mississippi River turn into open water, Louisiana residents finally got what they'd long awaited: A U.S. president saying he'll fight to save what little is left along their eroding coast.

Though details were vague, President Barack Obama's pledge to restore the Gulf Coast's degraded coast line has multibillion-dollar implications for the region's culture and economy and could preserve wildlife endangered by the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

In an Oval Office address Tuesday night, Obama said he was committed to making sure southern Louisiana, which is hemorrhaging a football field of marshland every 38 minutes, and other coastline are saved.

"We need a long-term plan to restore the unique beauty and bounty of this region," Obama said. "The oil spill represents just the latest blow to a place that has already suffered multiple economic disasters and decades of environmental degradation that has led to disappearing wetlands and habitats."

Obama appointed Ray Mabus, the secretary of the Navy and a former Mississippi governor, to lead the effort to develop a long-term Gulf Coast restoration plan. Obama said he wanted BP to "pay for the impact this spill has had on the region."

Coastal advocates have long said the human fabric and economic future of the Gulf Coast are at risk unless more aggressive steps are taken to inject freshwater sediment into Louisiana's estuaries. About 2,300 square miles of marshland have been lost from the state's coastline since the 1930s.

"Finally, we have someone at the highest level recognizing the significance of this issue and the significance of the pending tragedy, and just that is worth its weight in gold," said R. King Milling, a banker who chairs Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal's coastal commission.

The Mississippi River built all of south Louisiana, including the fragile area on which the city of New Orleans sits, as it moved silt from the nation's heartland to the coast, creating land. But the river has been channeled since the 1930s with massive flood control structures and levees, cutting off its natural flow tendencies.

Without a new feed of nutrients and fresh water, natural erosion processes that are worsened by powerful hurricanes have steadily worn down the coast from Atchafalaya Bay to New Orleans. Delicate wildlife estuaries that provided a buffer and kept the full force of hurricane storm surge ramming urban areas have all but vanished in some places.

"For us coastal Louisiana is on life support, and it will take more than a cleanup for it to survive," said Val Marmillion, a founder of the America's WETLAND campaign, an initiative to persuade the U.S. government to use more offshore drilling royalty taxes to shore up the coast.

Obama provided few details about how his administration would restore the coast. He noted that he had approved a plan by Louisiana officials to build new barrier islands to block oil coming ashore.

Experts believe the best way to rebuild the coast is to redirect the Mississippi River's flow so that the river could mimic the way it once built up estuaries before the levees were erected.

Glen Swift, a fisherman and Arkansas native who came to Louisiana in the 1970s, said his marsh cannot be rebuilt unless the levees are taken down.

"They got it where the current (in the Mississippi) is so fast, it's carrying all the sediment out to the Gulf," Swift said. "The land's disappearing so quick, it's a man-made thing."

In 1990, Congress passed the Coastal Wetlands Planning, Protection and Restoration Act, which allowed federal agencies to do about $50 million a year in small-scale restoration.

At the time, Louisiana had lost about 1,800 square miles of coastal wetlands, an area roughly the size of Delaware, according to U.S. Geological Survey maps.

Still, the loss has outpaced restoration. Since the 1990s, more than 400 square miles of wetlands have been lost, the USGS says.

Fixing Louisiana's estuarine environment is estimated to cost between $10 billion and $50 billion. To do the costly work, Douglas Brinkley, a Rice University historian, said Obama could tap a share of the billions of dollars BP is expected to pay for damage caused by the oil spill. Obama was scheduled to meet with BP executives Wednesday to negotiate a deal on compensation for the fishermen and towns affected by its April 20 blowout of the 5,000-foot-deep well.

"They (the White House) need to attack the wetlands issue head on right now," Brinkley said.

Rebuilding coastal Louisiana with river water and sediment has been studied for years and there are detailed plans on the shelf to ramp up conservation efforts.

Experts say one early effort could be to open a portion of the lower Mississippi River levee system. The break in the levee, known as a crevasse, would flush out oil and slowly help build land.

But allowing the river to run free of its channel also presents problems.

Louisiana's coast is dotted with river diversion structures running below capacity — and in some cases left unused for years. Opposition from shippers, oystermen, towns and some ecologists has stymied the reintroduction of fresh, but polluted, Mississippi water and mud in the coastal system.

"It's a balancing act," said Robert Turner, the regional director of the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority-East, a levee agency that oversees flood protection around New Orleans.

Over at least two generations, Louisiana residents have watched as places dear to them have turned into open water. It's common to talk with 50-year-old fishermen who can point to places where ridges, airstrips, cemeteries and entire villages once stood.

Even New Orleans is at risk. Founded in 1718 on a high ridge next to the Mississippi, its growth for nearly 300 years has spread to the mushy ground once poured out by the Mississippi. Those coastal marshes are a first line of defense against massive storm surges driven in from the Gulf by hurricanes.

"If this country fails to understand the significance of this delta region, the damage to the area and the impacts of the citizens of this country will be astronomical," Milling said.



http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_gulf_oil_spill_restoring_the_coast

Jolie Rouge
08-28-2010, 05:09 PM
I would like to note that dispite the MSM tunnel vision, there were many communities affected by Katrian and Rita besides New Orleans... many have made little recovery due to this neglect. To give a glaring example the tv show "The Colony" is filmed in Challemette LA - it is painful to see how wreckage of so many lives... more so by the way it has been ignored.


New Orleans' fragile recovery, 5 years after Katrina

New Orleans today is once again the vibrant, multicultural city of legend, hustling and bustling with seafood festivals, Mardi Gras celebrations, spicy foods and live music echoing from almost every street corner. But five years ago, it was a city of despair and destroyed buildings submerged under 12 feet of water, much like most of the Gulf Coast hit by Hurricane Katrina.

Katrina was the most destructive and costly natural disaster in U.S. history, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The National Hurricane Center (NHC) reported that the Category 5 hurricane killed a total of 1,833 people across five states, damaged more than 420,000 houses, and forced 1.2 million people to evacuate their homes.

Winds up to 135 mph tore off rooftops and four breached levees sent water gushing into the surrounding cities. Data from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers reported that coastal cities suffered from 28-foot waves that penetrated six miles inland.

News helicopters captured images of desperate families stranded on islands of rooftops waiting to be rescued, while less flooded areas became rampant with looting and violence .

The damage cost an estimated $84.6 billion in insured losses, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA). Thousands of people lost family members, friends, jobs, homes, and businesses.

But five years later , the recovery has come a long way, with the combined effort of aid organizations, the federal government, and volunteers.

In New Orleans, average wages have grown 14 percent in the past five years, according to “The New Orleans Index at Five,” a report by the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center. It’s the first time wages have caught up to the national average since the 1980s.

The report found that more people are starting new businesses, surpassing the national average for the first time in a decade, and there has been significant growth in knowledge-based industries.

By 2009, jobs in higher education surpassed shipbuilding and heavy construction and engineering to become the fourth-largest economic driver in the metropolitan area, the report stated. The median household income has grown, as well as the number of middle- and upper-class families.

Quality of life has also improved. There are more arts and culture nonprofit organizations, and the education overhaul after Katrina has given residents access to better schools. The report also points out improvements in the criminal justice system, better health-care access and more dedication to restoring the environment.

But there is still a long way to go. The local economy continues to lag. The area's top industries, such as tourism, oil and gas, and shipping, have suffered many losses and setbacks, and now must deal with the aftermath of the recent recession and the BP oil spill as well.

According to the report, there are significant gaps in levels of education between racial groups, and the number of suburban poor people has increased to 93,000 compared with 68,000 in the city. Housing costs residents an average 35 percent of their income, and crime rates are well above the national average.

While there is still much to be done to help the Gulf Coast states recover, residents stay resilient. New Orleanians won't let the damage dampen the vitality of their city. The celebrations continue, and the bands play on.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/ynews_ts3464;_ylt=AgtMfLSqGiLZOJzrJf6ZElas0NUE;_yl u=X3oDMTNqOTVhNXVwBGFzc2V0A3luZXdzLzIwMTAwODI0L3lu ZXdzX3RzMzQ2NARjY29kZQNtb3N0cG9wdWxhcgRjcG9zAzQEcG 9zAzEEcHQDaG9tZV9jb2tlBHNlYwN5bl9oZWFkbGluZV9saXN0 BHNsawNuZXdvcmxlYW5zZnI-

Jolie Rouge
08-28-2010, 05:23 PM
Hurricane Katrina: Five years on, New Orleans's problems have gone national
Danny Heitman – Fri Aug 27, 11:33 am ET

Baton Rouge, La. – The fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina is an occasion to think of the hurricane and its aftermath as a singular event, and in many ways, the storm and its consequences were, in fact, unique.

But five years after a hurricane that ranks as one of the worst natural disasters in American history, the storm seems less like an aberration and more like a prelude to themes that have continued to shake our national life far from the shores of the Gulf Coast.

Overnight, Katrina left thousands of homeowners with property that was worth much less than they owed on it. Back in 2005, the thought of such a phenomenon seemed surreal, a stark blemish in an otherwise booming real estate market across the country. But in the wake of a subsequent global recession – and a meltdown in the housing sector – homeowners throughout the United States have felt an eerily similar reversal of circumstances.

'Quaint' bailout

The profound losses of Katrina created the rationale for sweeping federal investment in the recovery. By one estimate, the hurricane cost the federal government about $114 billion. That kind of spending didn't come without its critics. In 2005, the prospect of using so many tax dollars from Washington for economic rehabilitation struck many detractors as government overreach. In light of more recent government bailouts, the worries about Katrina's price tag now seem almost quaint. The Obama administration committed $110 billion alone to help the recession-stressed American car industry. The federal Troubled Asset Relief Program, established to prop up failing financial institutions, exposed taxpayers to $700 billion in obligations (though the actual cost so far is just $66 billion). Last year, Congress approved a $787 billion stimulus bill for the nation's economy. By comparison, the Katrina recovery now looks like a bargain. The aftermath of Katrina also prompted widespread cynicism about the effectiveness of large and important national institutions. As the levees failed in New Orleans and victims languished for days, many Americans wondered how so much apparent expertise in the halls of government had come to so little. That theme, too, has had its counterpart in the postmortems being done on the nation's financial industry, as well as the BP oil spill that's unfolded in Katrina's old stomping grounds.

Pray hard

Today, many Americans are still grappling in a direct and personal way with realities that first confronted those of us in Katrina's path on Aug. 29, 2005. Namely, that government is not always prepared for crisis and is sometimes painfully flawed in responding to it. Also, that large problems often demand large and expensive solutions. And finally, that in the absence of perfection among those who lead us, all that one can sometimes do is improvise, pray hard, and hope for the best.

Danny Heitman, a columnist for The Baton Rouge Advocate, is the author of "A Summer of Birds: John James Audubon at Oakley House."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20100827/cm_csm/322452;_ylt=Alo8qX_Hbl3csVoLo.rmNkus0NUE;_ylu=X3oD MTFlMjRlNjlwBHBvcwMyMjAEc2VjA2FjY29yZGlvbl9vcGluaW 9uBHNsawNodXJyaWNhbmVrYXQ-

Jolie Rouge
08-28-2010, 08:19 PM
President Obama is headed to New Orleans this weekend to mark the 5th anniversary of Katrina. The papers and airwaves will be clogged with all sorts of retrospectives. My column today reminds you of the ugly racial demagoguery by leading Democrats and “civil rights” leaders from Jimmy Carter to Charlie Rangel to Malik Zulu Shabazz. It’s a divide that has also deepened in Obama’s imaginary age of post-racialism.

Related from Charles Krauthammer: The last refuge of a liberal. “What’s a liberal to do? Pull out the bigotry charge, the trump that preempts debate and gives no credit to the seriousness and substance of the contrary argument. The most venerable of these trumps is, of course, the race card.”

***

Hurricane Katrina and the race card: 5 years later
by Michelle Malkin

This weekend, on the 5th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, civil rights activists and hip-hop stars will hold what they call a “healing ceremony” to commemorate the disaster. President Obama will speak at a separate event in New Orleans on Sunday. But don’t expect any of these reconciliation-seeking leaders to confront the indelible stain of racial demagoguery left by the left in Katrina’s aftermath. Hating George W. Bush means never having to say you’re sorry.

The Olympic gold medal for racial grievance-mongering went to rapper Kanye West, who railed during a supposedly nonpolitical nationwide telethon that the government was shooting “us,” that “those are my people down there,” and that “George Bush doesn’t care about black people!” West’s vulgar exploitation of a charity drive — which was meant to unite America — left most viewers with the same aghast, frozen expression as the one on comedian Mike Myers’ face as he tried to rescue their fundraising segment from the sewage.

Not to be outdone, the Congressional Black Caucus convened a press conference to blast news reporters for describing Katrina victims as “refugees.” Yes, really. The Rev. Jesse Jackson echoed their complaint: “It is racist to call American citizens refugees.” Refugees are, by dictionary definition, “exiles who flee for safety.” How this could be construed as bigoted remains as much a mystery as the source of unhinged Huffington Post blogger and self-proclaimed “social justice advocate” Randall Robinson’s bogus claim “that black hurricane victims in New Orleans have begun eating corpses to survive.”

Robinson retracted the report, but did not apologize for spreading the black cannibalism tale around the world and using Katrina to vent his own anti-American venom about his country being a “monstrous fraud.” Nation of Islam race hustler-in-chief Louis Farrakhan trafficked in his own baseless conspiracy-mongering about “a 25-foot-deep crater under the levee breach” indicating that the levee “may have been blown up to destroy the black part of town and keep the white part dry.” Director Spike Lee stoked the levee truthers further, declaring, “If they can rig an election, they can do anything!”

New Black Panther Party head Malik Zulu Shabazz chimed in, calling the Katrina rescue and recovery operation a “racist occupation of subjugation rather than a relief effort,” and saying it was designed “to keep non-white people in a state of subjugation on all levels, and they are viewed as expendable in order to protect the interest of the system.” Donning her own tinfoil hat, Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee suggested that Republican suppression of the black vote in 2000 and 2004 was to blame for the government’s botched Katrina response.

Democratic Rep. Charles Rangel drove the racial wedge in deeper by comparing President Bush to brutal Alabama segregationist Bull Connor. “If there’s one thing that George Bush has done that we should never forget,” Rangel spewed, “it’s that for us and for our children, he has shattered the myth of white supremacy once and for all.” At a House hearing, a Katrina witness testified unchallenged that black New Orleans residents were victims of “genocide and ethnic cleansing.”

The execrable Jimmy Carter waited a few months to unleash his own Bush-bashing bile — at the funeral of Coretta Scott King, no less — in February 2006. “We only have to recall the color of the faces of those in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi, those who were most devastated by Katrina, to know that there are not yet equal opportunities for all Americans.”

Carter’s speech not only lacked basic decency. It lacked any grounding in reality. According to vital statistics released just months after the storm by the primary morgue that processed the bodies of the deceased, 48 percent of those who died in the natural disaster were black, 41 percent were white, with another 8 percent unknown and 2 percent Hispanic. Little-noted follow-up analysis confirmed those preliminary results and also debunked the myth that the poor were disproportionately affected by the storm.

Five years later, the same color-coded paranoia and political opportunism that poisoned the Hurricane Katrina recovery permeates every current conflict in the public square: Ground Zero Mosque opponents are all suspiciously funded bigots, according to Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The Tea Party movement is the new Bull Connor, according to every liberal New York Times columnist. President Obama’s critics hate black people, according to every major black Hollywood director and hip-hop mogul. As for the soul-fixing, Nobel Peace Prize-winning commander-in-chief whose election was supposed to heal the divide, I will guarantee you he won’t ever lift a finger to repudiate the cynical smear tactics against his unjustly accused predecessor.

Post-racial America, we never knew you.

http://michellemalkin.com/2010/08/27/hurricane-katrina-and-the-race-card-5-years-later/

Jolie Rouge
08-23-2011, 07:20 PM
My daughter's class has a project ... they have to frame a five point arguement to convince someone from New York City why their federal tax dollars should be used to midigate the loss of Louisiana's wetlands....

Jolie Rouge
08-15-2012, 08:28 PM
State of Emergency for Plaquemines Parish
Posted: Aug 15, 2012 9:47 PM

PLAQUEMINE, LA (WAFB) - Governor Bobby Jindal declared a State of Emergency for Plaquemines Parish Wednesday as the parish deals with drinking water issues from a saltwater intrusion.

A salt wedge is moving up the Mississippi River because of historic low levels of water on the river, which is affecting the parish's water supply.

The Governor's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness are delivering 30,000 bottles of water to the parish. GOHSEP transported the first delivery of 6,900 bottles of water to Plaquemines parish on Wednesday. The Louisiana National Guard will deploy a truck that contains 4,000 gallons of water to the parish Thursday morning and will continue to provide this same supply for five days.

The parish wants to use four barges to supplement the local water supply. In order to ensure that this water is safe, the barges must be tested to ensure that they are safe to carry water. The water will be filtered after it is transported.

Once the water is treated, DHH will test it to be certain it meets federal drinking water standards and is safe for human consumption.

http://www.wafb.com/story/19290222/state-of-emergency-for-plaqu

Jolie Rouge
04-28-2013, 10:56 AM
Washed away
Places in Plaquemines Parish disappear as coastal land loss continues.

http://theadvocate.com/csp/mediapool/sites/dt.common.streams.StreamServer.cls?STREAMOID=eJYVh $34DgexahIIv5h4NM$daE2N3K4ZzOUsqbU5sYv3Esc59iDigZU hTNaQv4NzWCsjLu883Ygn4B49Lvm9bPe2QeMKQdVeZmXF$9l$4 uCZ8QDXhaHEp3rvzXRJFdy0KqPHLoMevcTLo3h8xh70Y6N_U_C ryOsw6FTOdKL_jpQ-&CONTENTTYPE=image/jpeg

Locations in Plaquemines Parish disappear from latest NOAA charts

By AMY WOLD Advocate staff writer April 28, 2013


“People get tied to places. When you say ‘I used to fish trout in Yellow Cotton Bay’ and you may be across the country and you hear Yellow Cotton Bay is gone, that means something.” Mel Landry III, marine habitat resource specialist with the NOAA Restoration Center

Yellow Cotton Bay, officially, no longer exists.

The bay, along with Bayou Jacquin and 29 other places in Plaquemines Parish, have been lost from Louisiana’s shrinking coast.

And now they are no longer listed on National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration charts.

Despite decades of discussion about the problem in Louisiana, coastal land loss can be an abstract idea for people who don’t live in those areas.

“So many people don’t get it because they look at this as a bird and fish problem,” said Garret Graves, chairman of the state’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority and executive assistant to the governor for coastal activities.

The loss of those 31 place names from the NOAA charts, Graves said, “really goes to show how real this threat is to our culture and many communities in south Louisiana.”

“People get tied to places,” said Mel Landry III, a marine habitat resource specialist with the NOAA Restoration Center. “When you say ‘I used to fish trout in Yellow Cotton Bay’ and you may be across the country and you hear Yellow Cotton Bay is gone, that means something.”

Officials are not too sure exactly when these places disappeared. The shoreline surveys that provided the information for the updated NOAA charts were prompted by the 2005 hurricane season, but the charts likely reflect larger changes.

The charts, or portions of them, are periodically updated. Meredith Westington, chief geographer with NOAA’s Office of Coast Survey, said sometimes only a certain type of information in a chart is updated.

“This is just sort of the beginning” of the shoreline updates, she said, noting that more charts will be coming out this year. And it’s possible more place names may be taken off the NOAA charts.

The 31 names removed thus far will be moved to a “historical” category. Despite restoration projects being planned or built in Plaquemines Parish, it’s unlikely any of those 31 place names will be returned to the charts.

Projects generally aren’t planned for or built in open water, given the limited funds available for coastal restoration, said Landry, the marine habitat specialist.

“The likelihood of us going into these areas with a pipeline or dredge to rebuild land isn’t good,” he said.

Louisiana has lost 1,880 square miles of land since the 1930s and is currently losing more than 16 square miles per year, according to the state’s master plan for coastal restoration and restoration.

There are a number of factors for that loss. Levees constructed along the Mississippi River for navigation and flood control have starved the Louisiana coast of the sediment that rebuilt land as the river delta naturally sank.

“It starts with the subsidence,” Landry said.

Subsidence, or the natural sinking of the land, creates pockets of water within the marsh. As tides move in and out of the area, further erosion occurs. New ponds and lakes get larger, and eventually the separation between the bodies of water disappear. That open water leads to rough wave action, which exacerbates the erosion.

As areas that were once marsh become open water, daily tides push more water in and out of the inland marshes, leading to even more erosion, Landry said.

Some coastal restoration projects are either under construction or in the planning stage in the general area where the 31 place names have been removed.

Graves, the state coastal protection authority chairman, said without the work, more names will disappear from the maps.

“We’re on a trajectory to have communities wiped off the map without aggressive action,” he said.

Restoration at Pelican Island and Scofield Island, both barrier islands, continues, as does marsh creation work farther north in Plaquemines Parish, he said.

That builds on the work completed in the past several years at barrier islands such as Bay Joe Wise and East Grand Terre, he said. At the same time, levees and other types of protection for communities, like elevating homes, are included in the state’s coastal restoration and protection master plan.

The land loss in Plaquemines Parish is no surprise to Parish President Billy Nungesser. The latest NOAA chart, he says, “just makes it hit home.”

He noted the loss was accelerated in some areas by the Deepwater Horizon rig disaster in 2010, which flooded large stretches of the parish’s coast with oil.

One of the areas the parish has been working to restore is a small set of islands known as Cat Island. Although they had been eroding for years, when the 2010 oil spill hit, they were still a viable bird nesting habitat.

The oiled islands have been reduced to mere spits of land so packed with birds that many are nesting on the ground. It’s only a matter of time before a high tide or storm washes over them, Nungesser said.

He said the loss of place names signifies many other problems: reduced storm surge protection, increased flood insurance premiums, a heightened threat to public safety and harm to fish and wildlife.

The parish is planning to build 8-foot ridges to help protect the levees in the parish from storms, Nungesser said. The parish is moving ahead with the project, he said, despite fears from some people that the ridges are too high and may hurt the environment.

He said computer modeling has shown that smaller ridges don’t have an effect on storm surge and wouldn’t survive the storms.

“Build those high ridges and protect the marsh behind it,” he said.

With limited money available for restoration and protection work, he said, every dollar needs to count and go toward the best, longest-lasting projects. That’s especially true for the fines and penalties expected to be paid by BP for the Deepwater Horizon disaster, money that could be used for such projects, he noted.

“We’re not going to get a second chance at BP money,” Nungesser said.

http://theadvocate.com/home/5782941-125/washed-away

5 Comments

Jolie Rouge
07-08-2013, 08:37 PM
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Louisiana bayou sinkhole dilemma:Stay or pack up?
Families in tiny Bayou Corne face a wrenching decision after a huge sinkhole opened up near their community:
Do they stay put or should they pack up and move?
8 hr ago |By Littice Bacon-Blood of Associated Press

A massive sinkhole in Bayou Corne, La., is belching oil and natural gas, leading to the town's 350 residents being advised to leave.

The sob is deep and exhaled on a frustrated sigh.

"I cannot stand this!" The words burst from Annette Richie and ping off the bare walls of the empty living room as her neighbors of 20 years, Bucky and Joanie Mistretta, recall happier times along Bayou Corne.

"I know, I know," Joanie Mistretta said, soothing her. "You come back now and it's just sad."

They were supposed to be planning camping trips, cookouts and potlucks. Instead, the Mistrettas, the Richies and many neighbors in the swampy Assumption Parish community are packing up decades' worth of belongings, chased from waterfront homes that were supposed to be retirement nests by a gas-emitting, 22-acre sinkhole less than a mile away.

The sinkhole, discovered Aug. 3, resulted from a collapsed underground salt dome cavern about 40 miles south of Baton Rouge. After oil and natural gas came oozing up and acres of the swampland liquefied into muck, the community's 350 residents were advised to evacuate.

Texas Brine Co., the operator of the salt dome, is negotiating buyouts of residents who have not joined lawsuits filed against the company. Texas Brine spokesman Sonny Cranch said 92 buyout offers have been made, with 44 accepted so far.

The Mistrettas, retired educators, are taking the buyout offer.

Richie, a high school literacy teacher, and her husband are part of a class-action lawsuit that's scheduled for trial next year. Both families have bought new houses, in Ascension and Assumption parishes. After two decades together in Bayou Corne, they won't be neighbors anymore.

"We just feel that this place is not ever going to be what it once was," said Bucky Mistretta. "It was just a beautiful, pristine place on the bayou. And now that's gone, and we just don't feel safe about what's underneath us."

Residents who want to stay are wrestling with the same fears as their fleeing neighbors: Is it safe? Will the slow-growing sinkhole undermine the area's infrastructure, including Louisiana Highway 70? And will the natural gas bubbling to the surface on the bayou accumulate in confined spaces and cause an explosion?

Although parish officials have said they don't think either will happen, they are monitoring both situations.

Gas has been detected under at least four homes on the north side of the community, but the levels were low, said John Boudreaux, director of the Assumption Parish Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness.

Officials expect the sinkhole area to stabilize once debris fills the void created by the collapsed cavern. However, the land has continued to shift, and the hole has continued to grow.

A salt dome is a large, naturally occurring underground salt deposit. Companies drill on the dome's outskirts to create caverns in which to extract brine that is used in the petrochemical refining process, or for storage of such things as hydrocarbons. Officials say a cavern was being mined too close to the edge of the Napoleon Salt Dome, which caused the "unprecedented" side wall collapse.

The state fined the company $260,000 last year for its slow response in following state directives to build a containment berm around the sinkhole and to install air-monitoring devices in homes.

Dennis Landry, a 20-year property owner who developed and sold the lots in his subdivision and who owns a boat launch business that fronts Sportsman Drive, is staying put despite the sinkhole.

"It's hard to leave a beautiful little bayou paradise unless you feel it's absolutely necessary, and thus far, we're just hanging on," he said. "We go to the meetings. We get daily reports. We check the blog for any information. We have gas monitors inside of our homes. We just take it day by day."

Louisiana Highway 70 divides this pint-sized community of trailers and wood and brick homes. The south side is newer, sports an upscale subdivision of 22 houses and has Bayou Corne flowing through the backyards.

With street names like Crawfish Stew, Sauce Piquante, Bream Street and Sportsman Drive, it's clear that the bayou flowing through en route to Lake Verret is the main draw for many of the residents. Boats and campers are a fixture in most driveways, whether paved concrete or a bed of rocks.

http://news.msn.com/us/louisiana-bayou-sinkhole-dilemma-stay-or-pack-up?ocid=ansnews11

Jolie Rouge
07-15-2013, 11:15 AM
Officials report they believe the giant sinkhole is much deeper than originally thought and additional materials have surfaced.

https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash4/p75x225/1044888_10151573831533823_823760139_n.jpg

BAYOU CORNE, LA (WAFB) - Officials report they believe the giant sinkhole is much deeper than originally thought and additional materials have surfaced.

According to the Assumption Parish Police Jury, John Boudreaux with the Assumption Parish Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness has tagged the bottom center of the sinkhole, where the raindrop bubbles are occurring.

Authorities said the depth is more than 500 feet, although debris was felt at about 175 to 200 feet, while the weight continued to fall to the 500-foot depth.

Officials added there will be attempts this week to use a longer measuring device to determine the depth of what is suspected to be the "upside down witch's hat."

They reported more debris and hydrocarbon have risen to the top at the site.

http://www.wafb.com/story/22843940/officials-believe-sinkhole-deeper-than-originally-thought?utm_content=buffera69c4&utm_source=buffer&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=Buffer

Jolie Rouge
08-01-2013, 08:22 PM
One year ago Saturday, a now 24-acre sinkhole developed in Assumption Parish. It has grown by a factor of more than 20 with dormant periods and active periods, when tremors increase and methane and an emulsified oily gunk are released from deep natural deposits.

http://theadvocate.com/home/6607882-125/one-year-later-bayou-corne

Jolie Rouge
08-03-2013, 07:51 AM
LOOKING BACK: One year ago we started hearing reports of bubbling in the water of Bayou Corne. Little did we know what was about to happen. The massive sinkhole created by a faulty cavern has gobbled up 24-acres of land. Here’s a look back to one of the original reports we completed while the investigation was still in its infancy.

http://www.nbc33tv.com/news/local-news/crews-continue-to-find-out-more-about-mysterious-bayou-corne-sinkhole

Jolie Rouge
08-21-2013, 08:40 PM
The Assumption Parish sinkhole swallowed a sizeable clump of tall cypress trees in less than a minute Wednesday evening.

http://theadvocate.com/home/6845080-125/assumption-sinkhole-renews-activity-swallows

Jolie Rouge
10-03-2013, 08:31 AM
Life in the community of Bayou Corne has been anything but normal since a giant sinkhole opened up.
One official says the surface of the sinkhole could double in size.

Right now, it is at 26 acres. http://bit.ly/16HbOOo

Jolie Rouge
12-29-2013, 05:32 PM
Texas Brine draws up new sinkhole containment plans
Worst-case sinkhole scenario would reroute Bayou Corne
by David J. Mitchell ~ December 29, 2013

http://theadvocate.com/csp/mediapool/sites/dt.common.streams.StreamServer.cls?STREAMOID=CUiUF 8IK3YdAc1YelrEPjs$daE2N3K4ZzOUsqbU5sYsVSFzRNtr08c2 BRgTGhTF5WCsjLu883Ygn4B49Lvm9bPe2QeMKQdVeZmXF$9l$4 uCZ8QDXhaHEp3rvzXRJFdy0KqPHLoMevcTLo3h8xh70Y6N_U_C ryOsw6FTOdKL_jpQ-&CONTENTTYPE=image/jpeg

Texas Brine Co. has developed a backup plan to replace the cracked southern section of a protective levee surrounding the sinkhole in northern Assumption Parish and may look to reroute Bayou Corne if conditions deteriorate further, records show.

The company’s new draft plan, filed this month with regulators who are still reviewing it, proposes “triggers” that would prompt the levee replacement. It also outlines an alternative of rerouting Bayou Corne if a replacement levee proves too unstable to maintain due to sinking of the remaining land between the sinkhole and the bayou.

Company officials and regulators say it is unlikely there would be a need to reroute the bayou based on current projections for the sinkhole’s expansion but need to be prepared. Bayou Corne runs just south of the levee’s southern segment and forms half of a semi-circular arc of waterways south of La. 70. Bayou Corne ultimately joins Grand Bayou, which flows south to Lake Verret.

A popular getaway and fishing spot for Baton Rouge-area residents, the scenic cypress and tupelo gum swamps north of Lake Verret that the levee aims to protect are part of the largest swath of cypress in the Terrebonne Basin, state reports say. The sinkhole’s brackish water contains high salt concentrations, posing an ecological threat to the surrounding areas if not contained by protective levees.

The sinkhole was dormant for weeks this fall, but has rumbled back to life twice since late October. Spikes in “micro-earthquakes” have resulted in cracks and sinking in a section of the levee’s southern arm. As the 26-acre, lakelike hole has edged toward the southern levee and the bayou beyond, Texas Brine had been under growing pressure from regulators, parish government officials and the remaining residents in the Bayou Corne community to lay out contingency plans in the event the sinkhole expands farther to the south.

In the early months of the sinkhole, Texas Brine and state regulators used expedited permitting processes to build a levee, also known as a containment berm, as part of its response efforts. Officials with responding agencies said they do not want that to happen again, especially if Bayou Corne has to be rerouted. Texas Brine would need a key wetlands permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and other regulatory approvals to reroute the bayou.

Tom Killeen, administrator for state Department of Environmental Quality’s Inspection Division, said that office has urged Texas Brine officials to start moving on the permit process. “It’s a point we have made to them,” Killeen said. “It’s not long enough off for them not to be penciling in information in the application right now. We want to have enough time to vet it and to public notice it and treat it through a normal regulatory process.”

Though laying out plans for worst-case contingencies in the Dec. 13 plan, Texas Brine officials said they believe they can safely repair cracks in the existing levee, maintain it and monitor any changes with an array of sensors. State projections, company officials note, do not show the sinkhole will ever reach the bayou even if the sinkhole reaches what is considered a worst-case size of 40 acres. “The berm is working,” Texas Brine officials said in a written statement about its plans. “It is constantly monitored to make sure containment is maintained.”

Louisiana Conservation Commissioner James Welsh ordered Texas Brine in November 2012 to contain the sinkhole’s oily and salty contents and protect the surrounding freshwater swamp. The levee is the primary line of defense. Scientists think the breach of an underground salt dome cavern operated by Texas Brine last year unleashed percolating methane gas from natural deposits and caused the sinkhole to emerge between the Bayou Corne and Grand Bayou communities probably on Aug. 3, 2012.

The sinkhole and the partially collapsed Texas Brine cavern are linked underground. As a result, the ultimate size of the sinkhole is linked to how much rock and sediment it takes to fill the cavern until an equilibrium is reached. While state and company officials still can’t say how long that will take, projections suggest the rate of growth has slowed since the sinkhole formed although it is not done expanding.

Texas Brine designed the containment levee with a 20-year lifespan in mind. Testing has shown the sinkhole’s surface water is brackish, too salty to drink, while just 100 feet down, the water is saltier than the open ocean, state reports say. Texas Brine attained early containment of the sinkhole with a first layer of the levee in February while the company finished the 5- to 6-foot wall of earth, limestone and special liners. But, following seismic events during the spring high-water period, some incomplete sections of the western and southern levees sank or were breached, allowing swamp water to flow into the sinkhole.

An extension of the western levee had to be built, and the breaches or sunken areas in the southern levee were repaired. The entire levee was finished in September, Texas Brine officials said.

State and parish officials agree with Texas Brine that the containment system, once completed, has successfully held back the sinkhole’s contents. “We have not seen any data to suggest that water from the inside is finding its way to the outside,” Killeen said.

Texas Brine’s new plan does not have detailed designs for a new southern levee or bayou rerouting but proposes conditions when detail work would begin. For example, a new southern levee farther from the sinkhole, would be built if the existing levee drops 4 feet in 30 days even after planned repairs or if testing shows the underlying earth is too unstable for repairs, Texas Brine’s plan says.

Once the company determined it had to move the southern levee, it would then develop plans to reroute the bayou. The actual rerouting of the bayou would proceed if the replacement southern levee hit the same stability triggers set out for the existing levee. Patrick Courreges, spokesman for the state Department of Natural Resources, said the plan and a separate report on the existing levee’s stability are under review. An earlier company plan focused only on continued maintenance of the levee, said John Boudreaux, director of the Assumption Parish Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness.

Though the new plan still needs tweaking, it seems to address most of the contingency concerns, he said. “Bayou Corne is probably the biggest question,” Boudreaux said.

However, he said, scientific research on the sinkhole indicates little likelihood of it reaching Bayou Corne. A way to think of the sinkhole cavity is to compare it with the hollow space inside a tuba — a deep, cavernous middle surrounded by a broad shallow area at the top where the horn edges flair out.

Worst-case projections from August show the sinkhole, now more than 200 feet deep, and an outer area of sunken earth around the sinkhole between 2 and 10 feet deep could grow to a combined 80 acres. The hole is an oval shape, longer toward the northeast and La. 70 and toward the southeast and Bayou Corne. Under a worst case scenario, planning documents say, the combined area would be 2,500 feet across at its widest, stopping 160 feet from Bayou Corne at the closest point. Texas Brine’s proposed replacement levee would contain the hole and be about 120 feet from the bayou at the closest, maps show.

Nick Romero, 65, who remains in Bayou Corne despite a standing nearly 17-month evacuation order, said he is glad to see there is plan but doesn’t think it is enough. He said he has seen the sinkhole defy predictions before. “I believe they need to begin their plan to reroute Bayou Corne. Waiting for something to happen is a plan to fail,” said Romero, who was provided a copy of Texas Brine’s plan. “They need a plan that contains contractors, equipment, materials, owner agreements they can act on immediately.”

Jim Looney, 71, who lived in Bayou Corne for six years before a Texas Brine buyout and fished the area for decades, said he does not think a rerouting of the bayou is feasible given its role in draining the swamps into Lake Verret. “Too many things intertwine together in the water movement out there to try to say we’re going to reroute it,” said Looney, a local columnist and author on fishing. “That’s the best way I can put it.”

http://theadvocate.com/home/7901843-125/texas-brine-draws-up-new

Jolie Rouge
03-08-2014, 09:33 PM
Robert T. Gonzalez March 7 2014, 4:30pm
Louisiana's giant sinkhole showed up in radar data before imploding

Since 2012, a monstrous sinkhole in Bayou Corne Louisiana has been swallowing up land in giant, tree-sized gulps, growing to a whopping 25-acres. Now, analyses of NASA radar data indicate the land showed signs of collapsing before the sinkhole opened. This raises a pressing question: Could sinkholes like Bayou Corne's be predicted before they happen?

Theoretically? Yes. In practice, though, probably not. "You could spend a lot of time flying and processing data without capturing a sinkhole," said JPL researcher Ron Blom. Blom, along with researcher Cathleen Jones, analyzed radar data of Southern Louisiana collected by NASA's Uninhabited Airborne Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR) and found that the ground surface layer in Bayou Corne had, according to NASA, "deformed significantly at least a month before the collapse, moving mostly horizontally up to 10.2 inches (260 millimeters) toward where the sinkhole would later form."

http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/t_ku-xlarge/s9gjbk6vjtpvw598y9ux.jpg

This interferogram was formed with images acquired on June 23, 2011 and July 2, 2012. Colors represent surface movement, with one full color wrap corresponding to 4.7 inches (120 millimeters) of displacement. Image & Caption Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

"While horizontal surface deformations had not previously been considered a signature of sinkholes, the new study shows they can precede sinkhole formation well in advance," added Jones. "This kind of movement may be more common than previously thought, particularly in areas with loose soil near the surface."

Even if there are no immediate plans to fly NASA's UAVSAR over sinkhole-prone areas, it's encouraging to know that predicting sinkholes is something we could conceivably do moving forward. Though we suspect that's small comfort to the people that make up the community of Bayou Corne, many of whom were evacuated so as to keep them from being swallowed up by the sinkhole. The sinkhole, which continues to threaten the community, along with nearby Highway 70, is still growing – perhaps UAVSAR could at least be used to provide locals with some sense of where, and how quickly, it will continue to expand.

http://io9.com/louisianas-giant-sinkhole-showed-up-in-radar-data-befo-1539101296?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+io9%2Ffull+%28io9%29&utm_content=FaceBook

Jolie Rouge
09-02-2014, 04:34 AM
Losing Ground

Louisiana is drowning, quickly.

In just 80 years, some 2,000 square miles of its coastal landscape have turned to open water, wiping places off maps, bringing the Gulf of Mexico to the back door of New Orleans and posing a lethal threat to an energy and shipping corridor vital to the nation’s economy.

And it’s going to get worse, even quicker.

Scientists now say one of the greatest environmental and economic disasters in the nation’s history is rushing toward a catastrophic conclusion over the next 50 years, so far unabated and largely unnoticed.

At the current rates that the sea is rising and land is sinking, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists say by 2100 the Gulf of Mexico could rise as much as 4.3 feet across this landscape, which has an average elevation of about 3 feet. If that happens, everything outside the protective levees — most of Southeast Louisiana — would be underwater.

The effects would be felt far beyond bayou country. The region best known for its self-proclaimed motto “laissez les bons temps rouler” — let the good times roll — is one of the nation’s economic linchpins.

This land being swallowed by the Gulf is home to half of the country’s oil refineries, a matrix of pipelines that serve 90 percent of the nation’s offshore energy production and 30 percent of its total oil and gas supply, a port vital to 31 states, and 2 million people who would need to find other places to live.

The landscape on which all that is built is washing away at a rate of a football field every hour, 16 square miles per year.

For years, most residents didn’t notice because they live inside the levees and seldom travel into the wetlands. But even those who work or play in the marshes were misled for decades by the gradual changes in the landscape. A point of land eroding here, a bayou widening there, a spoil levee sinking a foot over 10 years. In an ecosystem covering thousands of square miles, those losses seemed insignificant. There always seemed to be so much left.

Now locals are trying to deal with the shock of losing places they had known all their lives — fishing camps, cypress swamps, beachfronts, even cattle pastures and backyards — with more disappearing every day.

Fishing guide Ryan Lambert is one of them. When he started fishing the wetlands out of Buras 34 years ago, he had to travel through six miles of healthy marshes, swamps and small bays to reach the Gulf of Mexico.

“Now it’s all open water,” Lambert said. “You can stand on the dock and see the Gulf.”

Two years ago, NOAA removed 31 bays and other features from the Buras charts. Some had been named by French explorers in the 1700s.

The people who knew this land when it was rich with wildlife and dotted with Spanish- and French-speaking villages are getting old. They say their grandchildren don’t understand what has been lost.

“I see what was,” said Lloyd “Wimpy” Serigne, who grew up in the fishing and trapping village of Delacroix, 20 miles southeast of New Orleans. It was once home to 700 people; now there are fewer than 15 permanent residents. “People today — like my nephew, he's pretty young — he sees what is.”

If this trend is not reversed, a wetlands ecosystem that took nature 7,000 years to build will be destroyed in a human lifetime.

The story of how that happened is a tale of levees, oil wells and canals leading to destruction on a scale almost too big to comprehend — and perhaps too late to rebuild. It includes chapters on ignorance, unintended consequences and disregard for scientific warnings. It’s a story that is still unfolding.

Speck by speck, land built over centuries

The coastal landscape Europeans found when they arrived at the mouth of the Mississippi River 500 years ago was the Amazon of North America, a wetlands ecosystem of more than 6,000 square miles built by one of the largest rivers in the world.

For thousands of years, runoff from the vast stretch of the continent between the Rockies and the Appalachians had flowed into the Mississippi valley. Meltwater from retreating glaciers, seasonal snowfall and rain carried topsoil and sand from as far away as the Canadian prairies. The river swelled as it rushed southward on the continent’s downward slope, toward the depression in the planet that would become known as the Gulf of Mexico.

Down on the flat coastal plain, the giant river slowed. It lost the power to carry those countless tons of sediment, which drifted to the bottom. Over thousands of years, this rain of fine particles gradually built land that would rise above the Gulf.

It wasn’t just the main stem of the Mississippi doing this work. When the river reached the coastal plain, side channels — smaller rivers and bayous — peeled off. They were called “distributaries,” for the job they did spreading that land-building sediment ever farther afield.

The delta had two other means of staying above the Gulf. The plants and trees growing in its marshes and swamps shed tons of dead parts each year, adding to the soil base. Meanwhile, storms and high tides carried sediment that had been deposited offshore back into the wetlands.

As long as all this could continue unobstructed, the delta continued to expand. But with any interruption, such as a prolonged drought, the new land began to sink.

That’s because the sheer weight of hundreds of feet of moist soil is always pushing downward against the bedrock below. Like a sponge pressed against a countertop, the soil compresses as the moisture is squeezed out. Without new layers of sediment, the delta eventually sinks below sea level.

The best evidence of this dependable rhythm of land building and sinking over seven millennia is underground. Geologists estimate that the deposits were at least 400 feet deep at the mouth of the Mississippi when those first Europeans arrived.

By the time New Orleans was founded in 1718, the main channel of the river was the beating heart of a system pumping sediment and nutrients through a vast circulatory network that stretched from present-day Baton Rouge south to Grand Isle, west to Texas and east to Mississippi. As late as 1900, new land was pushing out into the Gulf of Mexico.

A scant 70 years later, that huge, vibrant wetlands ecosystem would be at death’s door. The exquisite natural plumbing that made it all possible had been dismantled, piece by piece, to protect coastal communities and extract oil and gas.

Engineering the river

For communities along its banks, the Mississippi River has always been an indispensable asset and their gravest threat. The river connected their economies to the rest of the world, but its spring floods periodically breached locally built levees, quickly washing away years of profits and scores of lives. Some towns were so dependent on the river, they simply got used to rebuilding.

That all changed with the Great Flood of 1927.

Swollen by months of record rainfall across the watershed, the Mississippi broke through levees in 145 places, flooding the midsection of the country from Illinois to New Orleans. Some 27,000 square miles went under as much as 30 feet of water, destroying 130,000 homes, leaving 600,000 people homeless and killing 500.

Stunned by what was then the worst natural disaster in U.S. history, Congress passed the Flood Control Act of 1928, which ordered the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to prevent such a flood from ever happening again. By the mid-1930s, the corps had done its job, putting the river in a straitjacket of levees.

But the project that made the river safe for the communities along the river would eventually squeeze the life out of the delta. The mud walls along the river sealed it off from the landscape sustained by its sediment. Without it, the sinking of land that only occurred during dry cycles would start, and never stop.

If that were all we had done to the delta, scientists have said, the wetlands that existed in the 1930s could largely be intact today. The natural pace of sinking — scientists call it subsidence — would have been mere millimeters per year.

But we didn’t stop there. Just as those levees were built, a nascent oil and gas industry discovered plentiful reserves below the delta’s marshes, swamps and ridges.

At the time, wetlands were widely considered worthless — places that produced only mosquitoes, snakes and alligators. The marsh was a wilderness where few people could live, or even wanted to.

There were no laws protecting wetlands. Besides, more than 80 percent of this land was in the hands of private landowners who were happy to earn a fortune from worthless property.

Free to choose the cheapest, most direct way to reach drilling sites, oil companies dredged canals off natural waterways to transport rigs and work crews. The canals averaged 13 to 16 feet deep and 140 to 150 feet wide — far larger than natural, twisting waterways.

( continues ... )

http://projects.propublica.org/louisiana/


( interactive maps - slide show - more information )

https://fbexternal-a.akamaihd.net/safe_image.php?d=AQCUo7cWZNdO4Aul&w=470&h=246&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.propublica.org%2Fimages%2Fsoc ial%2Fla-without-restoration-1200.png&cfs=1&upscale

Jolie Rouge
09-05-2014, 04:46 AM
This is what the Louisiana Coast may look like in the next 80 years.
Very interesting story and comparison that graphically shows how radically the coast has changed in the last 80 years: http://www.vox.com/2014/8/30/6084585/watch-how-louisianas-coastline-has-vanished-in-the-last-80-years

https://fbcdn-sphotos-b-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xap1/v/t1.0-9/q82/p370x247/10636254_10204628303218298_2043085159551835489_n.j pg?oh=90ec4cc816c9ff536c32d952af6b4bd0&oe=549146D7&__gda__=1418018588_fb46d9de4f4582327a77bb2eed1f26b 5

Jolie Rouge
11-08-2014, 07:00 AM
Large, slow-moving hurricane could inundate Baton Rouge, new mapping system shows
AMY WOLD| awold@theadvocate.com
Nov. 07, 2014

http://theadvocate.com/csp/mediapool/sites/dt.common.streams.StreamServer.cls?STREAMOID=pVvIY NGFQvMDzuyVIVyKOM$daE2N3K4ZzOUsqbU5sYtQfyRzFfgF_Ye LSnrct15tWCsjLu883Ygn4B49Lvm9bPe2QeMKQdVeZmXF$9l$4 uCZ8QDXhaHEp3rvzXRJFdy0KqPHLoMevcTLo3h8xh70Y6N_U_C ryOsw6FTOdKL_jpQ-&CONTENTTYPE=image/jpeg

A new storm surge prediction map estimates that a large, very slow moving hurricane could push more than 9 feet of water onto LSU’s campus. In fact, all of southern Louisiana as far north as Pointe Coupee Parish could face such a storm surge if the conditions are just right, according to a new worst case scenario map released Thursday by the National Hurricane Center Office for Coastal Management.

But before people in Baton Rouge start hiring contractors to elevate their homes, it’s important to know that the chance of that level of flooding happening in Baton Rouge is low. For areas south of interstates 10 and 12, the chance of significant flooding increases, but that depends on the proximity to the Gulf of Mexico and the elevation of the land.

Although alarming at first glance, the map doesn’t reflect the effects of a single storm across the coast of Louisiana. Instead, it shows the worst-case scenario for any particular area along the coast, said Barry Keim, state climatologist. “That map can never happen (in total),” agreed Ken Graham, meteorologist in charge with the National Weather Service in Slidell.

The scenario in which storm surge could make its way into Baton Rouge would involve storm surge running through Lake Pontchartrain, into Lake Maurepas, up Bayou Manchac and then into low-lying areas of the parish.

Although Lake Pontchartrain is miles from Baton Rouge, it’s not that far away in terms of elevation. “All of that area is pretty low-lying,” Keim said.

It may seem far-fetched that a Category 3 storm could push that much water that far inland, but just because it hasn’t happened doesn’t mean it couldn’t, Keim said. “It is conceivable that something like that could happen,” he said.

Graham added that, out of thousands of scenarios run by the map’s creators, there may have been only a handful that showed storm surge getting as far inland as LSU. “The risk isn’t zero. There is some risk,” Graham said.

The newly released map also shows worst case storm surge scenarios for different categories of storms. The calculations within the map also goes beyond just wind speed. The map based its finding on thousands of hypothetical storms. In some parts of the country, as many as 60,000 varying storm conditions were used to come up with a map. The variations took into consideration forward speed, direction, size of storm and wind speeds. “This is the worst case scenario of a number of different storm events,” Keim said.

For example, under a Category 3, there is extensive flooding up through the Atchafalaya River basin that could bring storm surge into parts of Iberville, West Baton Rouge and even Pointe Coupee parishes. That type of storm would be a very large, very slow moving hurricane, Graham said.
“It’s your Isaac on steroids,” Graham said. “Most hurricanes aren’t going to do that.”

The new storm surge map is intended to provide a much clearer picture for coastal residents in Louisiana and around the country to understand the potential flooding risk. While having the new maps to show potential risk is exciting, it’s what will be done during a storm that could really save lives, Graham said.

When a storm watch is issued — 48 hours before landfall — meteorologists will run the computer model with numerous variations of the storm’s path, size, direction, wide speed and other characteristics.

About an hour after the storm watch is issued, the National Weather Service will be able to put out a worst case scenario map for the particular storm’s surge. So many variables will be put into that computer map that there will be only a 10 percent chance that the water levels portrayed will be exceeded, Graham said.

While it will look similar to the other worst case scenario maps, this one will be specific to the current storm, he said.

In addition, water levels will be portrayed as actual water above ground, unlike previous storm surge maps that used sea level elevations, which at times were hard to translate into actual flooding. “It’s a huge step forward,” Graham said.

This storm-based mapping was available to forecasters this year, but it hasn’t been needed because Louisiana hasn’t been threatened by a storm. One drawback to the maps is that it’s difficult to predict what will happen in areas surrounded by levees. Currently, there is no reliable way to estimate flooding potential within the levee systems like those that surround New Orleans or parts of Lafourche Parish, if those levees are overtopped, Graham said. NOAA is currently working on how to color code those areas because there is still flooding risk within those levees.

“We don’t want to cause a false sense of security,” Graham said.


http://theadvocate.com/news/10774150-123/large-slow-moving-hurricane-could-inundate

Jolie Rouge
09-18-2015, 06:25 AM
Moving mouth of Mississippi River, abandoning communities part of experts' new, startling recommendations for Louisiana's future
Southernmost communities should be abandoned, panel recommends
Bob Marshall| The Lens - Sept. 15, 2015; 9:01 p.m

The mouth of the Mississippi River should be moved north to Port Sulphur or English Turn and communities south of those points eventually will have to be abandoned if other parts of southeast Louisiana are to have a future into the next century.

Those were among the more startling recommendations proposed by the winning teams of coastal engineering and sustainability experts from around the world who took part in Changing Course, a design competition sponsored by Louisiana that kicked off in 2013.

Key features of the plans would represent dramatic departures from the state’s up-and-running Coastal Master Plan, a $50-billion 50-year vision that has received generally high praise from the scientific community. Experts said their recommended changes should be taken seriously because subsidence and sea level rise will make many existing communities indefensible in the coming decades.

“We want to stress this isn’t something anyone is saying needs to be done soon, but it is something we think will be necessary in the future – so we need to start planning for it now,” said Jeff Carney, Director of the LSU Coastal Sustainability Studio.

“This is going to happen. So the choice is, do we get out in front of it over the next 50 years and manage the process, or wait for it to happen to us – wait for the next big storm to wipe out communities, erase the shipping channel in the lower river and throw commerce into chaos?

“The leadership of the state needs to begin discussing these realities openly with residents now.”

Participants were charged with designing long-term plans that could ensure the presence of sustainable coastal wetlands into the next century while also maintaining or improving river commerce and flood protection. The state hoped the global reach of the competition would provide new ideas from the rapidly evolving fields of coastal engineering and science, even as it moves forward with the Master Plan. Twenty-three groups responded, and the three finalists were awarded $300,000 each to refine their presentations. Funding came from a group of philanthropic foundations and Shell Oil.

Although state officials didn’t commit to adopting any of the suggestions, the state Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority and the Army Corps of Engineers – the major partners in the Master Plan – were on the competition’s leadership committee.

However, Kyle Graham, executive director of the coastal authority, said his agency is investigating some of the specific land-building ideas and computer models that came out of the competition.



The winning plans came from the teams of Baird & Associates, Moffatt & Nichol, and Studio Misi-Ziibi. They included review and participation from the shipping, fishing, and energy industries.

Like the Master Plan, the winning designs focus on reconnecting the sinking, crumbling coastal wetlands to the freshwater and sediment in the Mississippi River.

However, the Changing Course participants worked with key advantages over the architects of the Master Plan: They were given a 100-year time frame instead of 50, and they were unencumbered by the budget realities, public-review processes and political approval required by state actions. Those points gave them the freedom to let science and engineering guide their decisions.

The three top designs reached consensus on several things:

•The future delta and coastal wetlands along the lower river will be dramatically smaller than today’s because the river doesn’t carry enough sediment to offset the combination of subsidence and projected sea-level rise. As one team member put it: “We won’t have enough mud to fill the deepening holes.”
•The required changes are so vast, expensive and socially disruptive they must take place over several generations.
•The rates of sinking and sea level rise mean communities downriver must eventually be abandoned. The state should begin educating residents now so they can begin discussions on how and when relocations will take place.
•Moving the mouth of the river north accomplishes several important goals. Sediment that now spreads out across the lower delta’s sinking basins and the nearshore Gulf with little benefit to the coast could be trapped and used for land building. Ships would have a shorter, quicker journey to port facilities. And the threat of river floods would be reduced because there would be a larger outlet closer to the city. The new channel would be dredged to the 50-foot depth soon to be necessary if the port is to remain competitive when the enlargement of the Panama Canal is completed.
•Diversions being considered for the lower river should be cancelled, and new diversions should be planned north of the city. The new locations would be more efficient land builders because they still have enough wetlands that can trap sediment and will be in areas with less subsidence.
•The coastal fishing industry cannot avoid dramatic relocation because major diversions are the only way to build and maintain enough wetlands habitat to supply its target species. Each of the plans hopes to rebuild basins on a schedule that would always result in enough estuarine habitat in some areas for viable fisheries on shrimp, crabs, oysters and fish such as speckled trout and redfish.




Some of the suggestions in the plans are not new. In fact, the master plan issued in 2012, stated that realignment of the lower river was “the best of any individual restoration project type” for building land. It recommended further analysis of that idea. Moving the mouth of the river northward would require building structures to redirect the current at that spot. That would cut off most of sediment supply to the rapidly subsiding lower delta.

Some coastal experts have long maintained the master plan has not given enough weight to the impacts on the lower river of subsidence – as much as 5 feet a century for the bird’s foot delta – and sea level rise. In a 2009 paper LSU researchers Harry Roberts and Michael Blum concluded there is not enough sediment in the river to prevent “significant drowning” of the area. They suggested moving diversions upriver of New Orleans.

Roberts, who was on the Baird team, said a review of the latest research by the teams strengthened those convictions.

“All three of the teams came to the same conclusions that the retreat of the coast and subsidence has outstripped our resources to solve the problem on the lower river,” he said. “I think everybody now realizes we’ve reached the point where you have to use the river’s resources in a big way to combat this – that anything else you do is kind of piecemeal and won’t last.”

Roberts said the final plans also concurred with his 2009 assessment that spending valuable sediment resources trying to build land on the lower delta would be a futile effort.

“Any new wetlands you build down their will eventually be isolated from the rest of the coast by subsidence and sea level rise,” he said. “By moving diversions north, we’ll be building wetlands in areas with less subsidence and that we can defend in the future against sea level rise.”

Rather than criticize the master plan, team members said their visions expanded on ideas and results already evident in what the current plan hopes to accomplish.

For example even with its claim to be building more land in aggregate than the state is losing by 2060, the Master Plan forecasts a smaller coast and delta. It also has no plans to save the bird’s foot delta.

But the design teams go much farther than the Master Plan in making the case for dramatic changes in the river’s lower channel, in the use of diversions and the need to relocate communities.

The Baird team would move the mouth of the river to English Turn – within sight of New Orleans — then maintain the existing shipping lanes through Southeast Pass.

The Moffatt-Nichol and Studio Misi-Ziibi groups would move the mouth to Port Sulphur and West Pointe a la Hache respectively. They would dredge new shipping channels either west into Barataria Bay or east into Breton Sound.

Each would result in the communities in lower Plaquemines Parish being connected to the rest of the state by bridges or ferryboats – and then only as long as those landscapes remained above the rising Gulf.

Team members said the engineering and design work for the plans was the easy part, and the toughest jobs would be finding the political will even to begin the discussions their solutions should provoke.

Steve Cochran, the Environmental Defense Fund’s director of the Mississippi River Delta Restoration coalition, which also helped manage the competition, said any chance at sustainability for the region would involve having discussions about these major changes coming from the communities involved — not being handed down by governments.

“There’s been some incredible thinking coming out of the process, but the real value will be if we can have people take a look at what the future holds, and say, ‘OK, this is what we need to start thinking about. This is where we want to be in the future, and this is how we’re going to get there.’ ”

http://www.theneworleansadvocate.com/news/13456037-176/experts-foresee-moving-mouth-of

Jolie Rouge
12-07-2015, 08:18 AM
Every Map Of Louisiana Is A Lie — What It Really Looks Like Should Scare You

http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/54175faaeab8eabb678fda39-480/louisiana.png


http://www.businessinsider.com/louisianas-coast-is-sinking-2014-9