and many who came back have left
I've always thought from the first weeks after the hurricane NO should be smaller
9th ward returned to cypress swamp
1/2 mile or mile of Pontchartrain perimeter left natural
same with Lake Borne
and goodbye to Mr Go
money spent in building up the wetland and barrier islands
interesting read:
The loss of the delta wetlands is an emerging environmental catastrophe that makes the problems in the Everglades look like a leaky faucet.
More than 1 million acres of wetlands—or 1,900 square miles—have been lost since 1930. The U.S. Geological Survey predicts that 328,000 to 440,000 acres of additional wetlands—or 500 to 700 square miles—will be lost by 2050 if nothing is done.
That’s bad news for hundreds of species, including 17 endangered and threatened species and commercially important species like shrimp, sea trout, oysters, menhaden and a wide variety of fur-bearing animals.
Louisiana ranks second only to Alaska in the value of seafood catches, annually landing 1.2 billion pounds of seafood worth more $345 million. More than 30,000 commercial fishing jobs depend upon the health of the river’s delta.
The marshes, forested wetlands and other habitats of the Mississippi’s coastal delta provide food and shelter for permanent and seasonal visitors, including 70 percent of North America’s migratory waterfowl. The delta also serves as a sort of landing zone for all of the hungry, exhausted birds migrating from South America.
And yet, the impacts on the environment and those who make their living harvesting the delta’s natural bounty is not the biggest worry facing Louisiana officials.
Louisiana’s coastal wetlands also serve as a natural flood protection system for the nation’s largest collection of oil and gas infrastructure, the city of New Orleans and hundreds of other cities and towns, and the port.
Today, the buffer of wetlands and barrier islands created by the delta intercept and reduce storm surges and hurricanes. As hurricanes barrel toward New Orleans and other population centers, wetlands and barrier islands “break up” the powerful storms. Once the wetlands and barrier islands are gone, hurricanes won’t touch anything until they reach the French Quarter. One expert estimates that the loss of 3 square miles of wetlands increases the storm surge by 1 foot.
Overall, about 2 million people live in harm’s way. Put another way—lots of people will drown in their cars.
As the marshes are lost and the barrier islands erode, oil and gas wells, pipelines and other infrastructure that populate the swamp like strange, steel herons will be exposed to more wind and wave action than they were designed to withstand. Pipelines that are now buried would be exposed and burst.
Some of the nation’s most important oil and gas facilities are protected by the wetlands, including two of the four major storage facilities of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port, which serves as the central unloading and distribution point for all incoming supertankers to the Gulf region.
“As the buffer zone [of wetlands] disappears, the coastal zone and everything in it becomes more susceptible to storm damage and flooding from ever-smaller and less severe storms and hurricanes,” said Ed Landgraf, who works for Shell Pipeline Company.
If the wetlands continue to erode, he said, refineries, terminals, pipelines and oil and gas wells would be closed for long periods. “Depending upon the severity of the storm damages, it is not inconceivable that it could take months or years to bring some of the facilities back on line,” Landgraf said. “In the long-term, the costs of inaction are much greater than the costs of preserving and protecting” the wetlands.
No one knows the precise cost of “preserving and protecting” the wetlands—much less how much it would cost to restore what has been lost since 1930, or whether it makes sense to restore 1 million acres of wetlands. After all, deltas come and go. This one, though, is just going.
Once state officials recognized the severity of the problem in the 1980s, they began to clamp down on the destruction of wetlands and to pay for some restoration. The federal government began to spend $50 million a year on restoration in 1990, and built two large diversion projects during the 1990s.
But, these piecemeal efforts were abandoned in 1998 when local interests produced a landmark report calling for, in Angelle’s words, “comprehensive, ecosystem-level coastal restoration.”
The results thus far, have been less than comprehensive. State and federal officials have proposed a series of ambitious freshwater and sediment diversion projects that would effectively poke holes in the levees and permit some of the river’s water and sediment to spread to restore and replenish the marshes. Simply allowing some freshwater into the muck that once supported marsh grass is often enough to “fertilize” the seeds that have laid dominant in the mud—something officials learned when they built a diversion south of New Orleans.
A draft plan released by the Corps of Engineers and Louisiana this summer calls for the immediate construction of three more diversion projects and the restoration of some barrier islands. The 10-year, $1.9 billion plan also calls for the creation of a demonstration program and a science and technology program to resolve some lingering scientific and engineering questions.
The Corps and the state characterized the plan as a first step—partly because of sticker shock within the Bush administration.
But, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee only authorized one of the diversion projects—and provided less funding for demonstration projects and science—when it approved a massive $8 billion water projects bill.
Louisiana is willing to pay its share, Angelle said. After all, the state has primarily financed the studies that have been completed so far.
But, he said, most of the benefits of the flood control and navigation projects that have created the problem accrue outside Louisiana—such as flood protection upstream. And, the whole nation will suffer if a hurricane shuts down energy facilities that provide 30 percent of nation’s oil and gas supply. |
