The recent tragedy in the Gulf of Mexico has once again shed a national light on the fact that coastal erosion in Louisiana puts our residents and businesses at risk. It has also highlighted the bureaucratic deficiencies and lack of genuine leadership that exists within government to restore and protect our culture and way of life.
We are losing 24 square miles of our Louisiana coastline each year. This is the equivalent of one football field every 38 minutes.1 Fortunately, our knowledge and understanding of the science associated with our land loss has been understood for over 40 years.2 Unfortunately, however, we have not placed the required priority on this issue and we have tolerated a lot of talk, but very little action from our leaders.
We have come to a critical moment in time for our state. We must make a decision to either protect the land we have, and restore what we have lost, or we must relocate our coastal communities further inland where they will be protected from hurricanes and the associated storm surge. What will we choose? If we retreat, we run the risk of losing our culture and the very essence of who we are. If we choose to protect and restore, we will have to make some tough decisions, and the decisions we make will impact some of our residents more than others in the short term. However, if we are to truly do what is necessary to secure our coastal communities we will all have to willing to sacrifice a little to gain a lot.
I have spoken to State Representatives about this issue. I have also spoken to someone I consider to be an expert on the topic from the South Lafourche Levee Board. Everyone seems to agree that we need more fresh water diversions from the Mississippi River which will use natural processes to deposit silt in areas where our marshes have been destroyed by salt water intrusion. By rebuilding our marshes we improve our storm surge protection for coastal communities. For every 2.7 miles of marsh the storm surge is reduced by 1 foot. We also need to use dredging along with the fresh water diversions to rebuild our barrier islands which will also help to offer us some protection from hurricanes. Finally, we must use levee projects which provide us with an additional layer of protection from hurricane storm surge.
Knowing what to do is not our problem. Finding leadership who understands the significance of the Louisiana coast to the rest of the nation, finding leadership who will fight to make coastal protection and restoration a priority as well as to fight the bureaucracy that prevents us from taking action continues to be our real problem.
The Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act of 2006 called for the coastal states in the Gulf of Mexico to share their 37.5% of oil royalties in 2017. We cannot afford to wait until 2017 to protect and restore our coastline. As your representative I will propose legislation to amend this act to allow Louisiana and the other gulf coast states to obtain their increased shares immediately.
The Corps of Engineers, the EPA and other federal bureaucracies have slowed or halted the permitting process on coastal restoration efforts here in Louisiana. I do not believe that we should have to ask the federal government for permission to protect our coastline. As your representative I will work to remove the barriers of federal bureaucracy that hinders the swift development of coastal restoration projects.
1 http://dnr.louisiana.gov/crm/coastalfacts.asp
2 Curole, W., (2009) Flood Protection and Land Loss Position Paper and Response Request from Public Officials.