Spotlight
OP-ED by Steve Cochran: The Mississippi River is our strongest asset to hold onto our Coast, but we must use it
As many now know, our efforts to control the river for shipping and protect our communities from annual floods resulted in walls (levees) that severed the vital connection between the river and the land-building necessary to sustain its delta. That connection was to the sediment and freshwater delivered by the spring floods every year, which built and sustained the land outside of the river banks. While this management approach allowed us to maintain a degree of control over the river, it also created a false perception that things would remain relatively constant along our river and across our coast.
However, one thing about Louisiana’s coast is clear — there is no status quo. Change is the constant. There was a time when people knew how to live with nature and adapt to the changes it brought us. We built elevated homes that could withstand regular flooding events. We harvested our seafood seasonally to match the natural cycles of our estuaries.
When prior generations leveed the river, they disrupted a natural cycle, the consequences of which we are now confronting in a big way. And with the entrance of climate change onto the scene, that disruption has become critical. Despite these challenges, we can still effect change for the positive. While we won’t be able to get back to the coast of yesterday or hold on to all of the coast we have today, we have a very powerful asset to deploy as we work to maintain a sustainable coast for tomorrow.
How do we get there? Louisiana is currently advancing a powerful project to reconnect the Mississippi River to build and maintain thousands of acres of wetlands in the Barataria Basin — one of our nation’s most productive, and most threatened, estuaries. The project is called the Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion. It would be the largest individual ecosystem restoration project in U.S. history.
Earned Media
Mark Davis: More than past time to move with Mid-Barataria diversion
For years, the Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion has been a linchpin of Louisiana’s coastal protection and restoration plans. Basically, the project will reintroduce the waters and sediments of the Mississippi River back into a landscape the river once built but has been divorced from. Despite all of that planning and discussion, there are still uncertainties about the project and questions about its negative impacts and who will bear them. Some of those uncertainties involve questions of science and engineering that are way beyond my expertise to second-guess. I do know something about the process that authorized and funded the project and there is little prospect of doing something meaningful other than the MBSD.