Running head: EFFORTS TO REBUILD AND PROTECT LOUISIANA’S WETLANDS 1

Proposed efforts to rebuild and protect Louisiana’s wetlands

Name
School or Institution Name

Proposed efforts to rebuild and protect Louisiana’s wetlands

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Hurricane Katrina's disastrous flooding confirmed a three-decade warning by scientists:

Most of New Orleans is below sea level. South Louisiana's wetlands, which once helped buffer
the town from storms, have been disappearing at a spectacular rate. According to the U.S.
Geological Survey (USGS), an average of 34 square miles south of Louisiana's land, mostly
Marsh has been disappearing each year for the past five decades (Tibbett, 2006). 
 
From 1932 to 2000, only Louisiana lost nearly 1900 square miles to the Gulf of Mexico.
Most of these erosions are a result of combined human and natural activities (Shirley, 2020).
Today, Louisiana is among the most intensively engineered places in the country. Vast amounts
of water are rerouted using a lacework of corridors held in place by 2000miles of earthen, rock,
and concrete (Shirley, 2020). Walled off from Louisiana's floodplain, the Mississippi River can
no longer provide enough silt to the delta to keep up with the sea-level rise and natural
subsidence. Although local authorities were able to tame growing swamp levels and spring
floods, it was at an environmental cost- eliminating wetlands, deltas, and floodplains.  

Louisiana's marshlands' shrinking poses a threat to fisheries and agriculture activities and
exposes local residence to disastrous storms and flooding. In a bid to protect the coastline and
rebuild the state's natural resource, the congress passed the 1990 Wetlands Planning, Protection,
and Restoration Act. The act provides $50 million each year to support Louisiana restoration
projects. The act has provided funding for 118 projects, and so far, 75 have already been
completed (Shirley, 2020). 

Another approach to save Louisiana is the Coast 2050 consensus documented drawn by
federal agents and parish officials. The document calls for the re-engineering of the Mississippi
to mimic natural processes. Coast 2050 suggests that some portion of the river be rerouted
through canals and pipelines to flush the delta to increase the silt deposit and build-up south
Louisiana's sinking coastal line. The Caernarvon Freshwater Diversion Project could be one of
the models for implementing the Coast 2050 restoration goals. The diversion consists of a $26
million opening in the Mississippi's levee 24 miles south of New Orleans-the canal feeds
marshes behind Breton sound and has had substantial successes in increasing marshes and
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freshwater plant acreage (Tibbett, 2006). Large-scale implementation of such a project has the
potential to restore Louisiana. 

Nevertheless, Critiques challenge the re-engineering and rerouting of the Mississippi,

citing it as too expensive and instead should allow the river to follow its natural route. For
instance, Oliver Houck, director of the environmental program at Tulane University, challenges
the Coastal 2050 restoration concept as a futile practice. According to Houck, any projects
seeking to address Louisiana's restoration without halting Wetland distractions are doomed to
fail. He proposes that if water control projects were destroyed and Mississippi allowed to follow
its natural cause, it would inevitably be captured by the Atchafalaya River, which empties south
Louisiana. The two rivers' combined flow would help build sediments and build up Louisiana's
coast's most land-starved region. The downside to this analogy is that allowing Mississippi to
follow its natural cause would disrupt major shipping channels that support the region's
economy.
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Reference

Tibbetts, J. (2006). Louisiana's wetlands: a lesson in nature appreciation. Environmental

health perspectives, 114(1), A40–A43. 
Shirley, J. (2020). Louisiana Coastal Wetlands: A Resource at Risk - USGS Fact Sheet.
Retrieved 16 November 2020, from https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/la-wetlands/