Coastal Scientist Express Urgent Need for Action in Louisiana

On Wednesday March 4, 2009 in the late evening, Mark Schleifstein posted a Times Picayune article entitled, Sense of urgency grips coastal restoration summit. The article is a report on the two day summit held on using river diversions to rebuild Louisiana’s coast. A number of coastal scientists participating in the meeting are convinced of the need for major diversions from the Mississippi River to restore coastal areas. The Corps of Engineers, however, is not convinced of the same need. Regardless of this apparent disagreement, everyone seemed to understand the urgent need to do something.

Schleifstein reported that “the summit was prompted by repeated demands by a number of influential coastal scientists and state restoration officials that the Corps of Engineers speed up efforts to include very large diversions of water from the Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers in its plans for coastal restoration.”

Of course, the Corps is far behind schedule on publishing a report on category five hurricane protections which would include flood protection and coastal protection programs. Even when published, the report will not present such a category five hurricane protection plan. It will, instead, be a plan for how to make a plan to provide category five hurricane protection. This go slow approach is occurring in open defiance of Congressional will.

In response to this criticism, General Walsh of the Corps stated, ”I think all of us agree we’re on a burning platform, (But) which direction do we step off in? I don’t know.”

In my estimation, building large diversions from the main Mississippi river channel requires a balancing of coastal restoration needs with commercial navigation needs in the Mississippi River. The Corps has historically focused its primary interest on navigation needs, and it is not yet prepared to deal with the fall out from shifting its emphasis from sole concern with navigation to a balance between navigation and coastal restoration. Until the Corps is prepared to balance those interests, they will never support major diversions of water and sediment from the main channel of the Mississippi River.

Further, the Corps will always be able to find support for their resistance to large diversion projects from the commercial fishing and landowner interest near any proposed diversion project. While a public project may be worth building, one can always find resistance to the project from those whose property will be taken or damaged by the project. Thus, looking to those resistance points for support is an effective strategy for slowing the progress of designing and building diversion projects.