Earned Media
'Man, let's go!' Environmental groups cheer release of river diversion report
“This is huge,” said Kimberly Reyher, executive director of the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana. “Our group and other groups have been calling for this for 30 years. And now, with this [report], we’re no longer talking about 'if' we’re doing it but 'how.'”
“To finally get to this stage is very encouraging,” said Steve Cochran, a coastal resilience expert with the Environmental Defense Fund. “For some of us who’ve been wanting this for a long time – and getting older every day – it was kind of like, ‘Man, let’s go!’”
But Brian Moore, a policy expert with the National Audubon Society, said the diversion might be Louisiana's best hope.
“Without the Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion, the future of the coast and its wildlife is pretty dire,” he said.
Corps Report Sets Stage for $1.4B Wetlands Restoration Project
Features Kristi Trail, Pontchartrain Conservancy:
“As a concept, it’s a game changer,” says Kristi Trail, professional engineer and executive director of the Pontchartrain Conservancy, a nonprofit that advocates for environmental sustainability through scientific research. “We see it as something that must move forward in order to change how things are going with our current land loss.”
“This is a prime example of how to build back better in a way that builds lasting climate resilience for our vulnerable communities,” Trail says.
“For us, a future without the diversion would cause extreme land loss and further saltwater intrusion, and that will have a bigger impact on the community and the industry as a whole,” Trail says.
“As far as we can tell, this is the single-largest ecosystem restoration project in the United States. It’s going to build more wetlands than any other restoration project in the world, which for us is what we need to solve the challenges we face,” Trail says.
Quick hits: Louisiana news briefs for Friday, March 5
Quotes Kim Rehyer, CRCL: “This project will protect against future disasters,” said Kimberly Davis Reyher, executive director of the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana. “It will also create thousands of jobs and generate billions of dollars in economic impact when our state needs these investments desperately. Louisiana has no time to lose when it comes to our coastal crisis, and we must get this project built as soon as possible.”
Supporters of Louisiana’s largest coastal project welcome the findings in a new federal report
Features Kristi Trail, Pontchartrain Conservancy:
Study marks major milestone for Louisiana coastal plan
Associated Press story syndicated widely: “This project is a lifeline for coastal Louisiana. … It is the shot in the arm that our coast needs right now,” said Chip Kline, who chairs the agency charged with protecting the state’s coast.
The concept has been discussed for decades and essentially tries to recreate nature. Southeastern Louisiana is formed of sediment that washed down the Mississippi River and deposited over thousands of years. But as the river was leveed to protect surrounding communities, the sediment instead washed into the Gulf of Mexico.