Times Picayune: LAST CHANCE...Only 10 years to act to save Southeast Louisiana

The Times Picayune has the first of a 3 part series titled "Last Chance." It is devastating.....

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.

U.S. Geological survey benchmark, located at the southwestern end of Couba Island at the edge of Lake Salvadore, was installed in 1932 on dry land, and is now standing in 2 feet of water. 2/26/07 (link for photo gallery)

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.

Dead skeletons of cypress trees frame downtown New Orleans, just a few miles away.  11/21/06 (link for photo gallery)

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.

SNIP

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.

SNIP

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.

 

Do go read the Rest

Comments

[joel hanes]

John McPhee wrote a vivid account of the problems of the lower Mississippi twenty years ago, in the "Atchafalaya" section of his superb _The_Control_of_Nature_. I cannot recommend the book highly enough.

The New Yorker published an excerpt in Feb 1987, and it's available online
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/content/articles/050912fr_archive01?050912fr_archive01

[pansypoo]

don't expect it to get done in time. humans refuse to see the future.

[Elspeth]

Pansypoo - real humans see the future, but sadly we are not in a position to direct funding that way...
Can I just say I hate that this has to have come to such a crisis point??? I guess I just don't get the greedy-bastard mindset of so many folks in this world. "Damn the destruction, full speed ahead - afterall, it puts more lettuce in my bank account!!!" I don't see why folks need to "live" so freakin' large to the point of ignoring the world around them. And to think, we all know that when the water laps around their gated community (and I don't mean at their boat slip) - they will be blaming us and using us as the stepping stones to the shrinking bits of dry land.
This TP story has just pushed my nerves to the brink - 'cause it's just going to give the shrubco cabal that much more "reason" to ignore Louisiana and delay funding. Afterall, why throw good money after bad - except for the 'no-bid' greenery to "keep an eye on the situation" and "consultants"...until it's too late and pull up stakes from their cushy offices and retire inland, like Kansas.
Yeah, I probably need some Prozac or Cymbalta or something - but I hate meds, almost as much as I hate this assministration that specializes in demolition by neglect if not outright destructive practices.
Blessings,
Elspeth

[GentillyGirl]

There are ways to turn this around but the solutions will not please the Oil,gas and shipping concerns. One is to open the levees downriver from the city and let the River do Her job. Another is to close MRGO and fill it in from a feed from the River.

Much of this could be financed by the oil & gas companies since they are the ones who dug channels everywhere in order to build their pipelines and for ease of access. "You break it, you pay for it."

The shipping and producing sectors that required the guv'mit to "fix" the river will have to shoulder their part of the financial burden too. Maintenance of this program will be paid for by the oil & gas royalties once they hit in full force in 2017.

Pay for it now, or you will most certainly pay greatly for it later folks. Our delta swamps have suffered enough for the rest of the Nation. They must be healed.

[pansypoo]

maybe if louisiana told them no more oil til they fix it.

too many people are wooed by the siren call of less taxes and it's YOUR money!, forget all that nonsense of community and duty.
oh, GOD FORBID we sacrifice.

what's our next shopping holiday? gotta support the troops.