Louisiana Coastal Wetlands Lawyer & Attorney : Erich P. Rapp : Kean Miller Law Firm : Serving New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Shreveport, Louisiana

In the next several years, Louisiana faces serious challenges funding the state's share of scheduled hurricane protection and coastal restoration projects. Louisiana's share of such projects scheduled for fiscal year (fy) 2009 is $1.2 billion. While Louisiana's recent special session received significant media coverage in part because of the appropriation of $300 million for hurricane protection and coastal restoration projects, this funding is far short of the money required to cover the state's burden for projects planned by the federal government.

Even when this $300 million additional appropriation is combined with the prior budget of $224 million, the state is still short of the needed funding for fy 2009. In 2010 and beyond, the state's funding challenges continue. Louisiana will need $748 million in 2010 and $642 million in 2011 to cover Louisiana's share of federal led hurricane protection and coastal wetland restoration projects with considerable emphasis in all of these years on hurricane protection projects.

These  projects are indispensable to the future of Louisiana, and the state will have to find new funding sources to cover the costs. Even if all of these scheduled projects are fully funded, the spending proposed for coastal wetland restoration and protection is still far short of the need.

Louisiana is no where near the level of funding needed for a material coastal wetland protection much less a restoration program.  For more information on these funding challenges, see March 19, 2008 Times Picayune article, Coastal Authority to Meet Today to Talk Funding. 

Erich P. Rapp.

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The New Orleans Times Picayune is reporting on its web site as of 9:40 PM on Wednesday March 26, 2008 that Patrick "Shea" Penland has died at age 54. The obituary is entitled, Shea Penland, important Louisiana coastal scientist, dies. 

According to the T-P article,

"Penland was the director of the Pontchartrain Institute for Environmental Sciences at the University of New Orleans. He earned an undergraduate degree in physical geography from Jacksonville University in Florida. He earned master's and doctoral degrees in coastal geomorphology from LSU. Since 1979, Penland has published more than 100 papers for scientific journals, conducted more than 30 field trips and led more than 30 sessions at scientific meetings on the evolution of coastlines."

Although I did not always agree with Penland, he was an important voice in support of the restoration of coastal Louisiana who will be missed. I offer my prayers and condolences to his family at this difficult time.

Erich P Rapp.

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The Baton Rouge Advocate published an article on Friday February 29, 2008 entitled, Southwest La. wants coastal aid. This article summarizes recent complaints from public officials in southwest Louisiana concerning the relative balance of limited coastal restoration funds between southeastern and southwestern Louisiana.

These officials complain that in the 2009 Coastal Restoration and Protection Authority (CRPA)budget a total of $14 million in funds are budgeted for southeast Louisiana projects and only $1 million in funds are budgeted for projects in southwest Louisiana.

The chairman of CPRA, Garret Graves, seems prepared to respond. He has indicated in a recent CPRA meeting that the Jindal administration is considering a restructuring of the board to allow more balance. The type of restructuring that is under consideration is using land mass or population to determine representation.

Erich P Rapp.

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One cause of coastal land loss in Louisiana is saltwater intrusion into the coastal wetlands. One cause of saltwater intrusion into the coastal wetlands are north-south navigation channels connecting the Gulf of Mexico with inland locations. The construction and subsequent dredging of these open water channels allow saltwater to move inland further than existing wetlands would otherwise permit.

The Mississippi River Gulf Outlet also known as MRGO is one such navigation channel. Along the course of this channel since it was built in the late 1950's, larger and larger bodies of open water at and near the main channel have developed.

After hurricane Katrina, MRGO was referred to as the hurricane highway and blamed for storm surge reaching into St. Bernard and Orleans Parish along the course of MRGO. This resulted in a lawsuit against the Corps of Engineers for resulting flood damage that is still pending in federal court as of this writing.

After the hurricane, the Corps of Engineers began receiving increasing political pressure to close MRGO. This has result in a study and recommendations from the Corps concerning the closure of MRGO. These reports and studies are available on line at the Corps website for the New Orleans district.

Erich. 

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On February 29, 2008, the Baton Rouge Advocate newspaper published a letter from Maura Wood, a senior program manager with the National Wildlife Federation, under the headline, Letter: Preventing disasters key issue. Woods indicates that the National Audubon Society and the Environmental Defense Fund also support the efforts of the National Wildlife Federation in this cause.

In this regard, Woods urges representatives of Louisiana in Washington, D.C. to be leaders in restoring coastal wetlands as a barrier protecting the people living in South Louisiana from hurricanes.  Ms. Woods calls for a sense of urgency in the use of the land building power of the Mississippi River to restore coastal wetlands in Louisiana.

It is good to see these national environmental organizations taking a special interest in this important issue.

Erich P Rapp.

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A team of scientists has identified chemical compounds that can be used as bait to entice nutria into traps. Once in the traps, the nutria can be transported to areas away from the coastal wetlands. Nutria are about ten pounds in size and feed on grasses in coastal wetlands. Nutria are originally from South America, but were introduced to the Louisiana coastal wetlands in the 1930's.

Professor Athula Attygalle, an expert in molecular chemistry and mass-spectrometry based at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey, and a team of scientists from Cornell University and University of Iowa, have found a compound the nutria like which does not damage the environment.

Several volatile compounds, including terpenoids, fatty alcohols, fatty acids and some of their esters, were identified from solvent extracts prepared from anal scent glands of nutria according to the lead researcher.  The researchers believe that these compounds can serve as a powerful attractant to the nutria. While federal agencies have looked at various poisoning methods, none of those efforts has gone very far because of their harmful effects on other species.

An article published on March 10, 2008 concerning these new compounds can be found in the Environmental News Service in an article entitled: Chemical Found to Lure Nutria Out of Louisiana Wetlands.

Erich P. Rapp.

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The Bismarck Tribune published an editorial on March 7, 2008 entitled, Missouri River Study Could Be Spendy. The editorial concerns the current effort of certain interests along the Missouri River to have a new study done of the river and its tributaries.

The states along the Missouri River north of Sioux City, Iowa would like to see the Corps of Engineers conduct a new "Section 216 Study" of the Missouri River and its tributaries. In sum, these states would like to see the Corps rethink how it balances the navigational interests in the Missouri River which apply to those along the river south of Sioux City, Iowa against other interests in the river such as recreation, flood control, drinking water uses, irrigation, environmental protection, etc...

Most people in Louisiana probably do not think much about the Missouri River, but historically most of the sediment that built the coastal wetlands of Louisiana came down the Missouri River which enters the Mississippi River just north of St. Louis. After the Corps completed a series of dams in the upper Missouri River, very little sediment continued to flow down the Missouri into the Mississippi River. The old adage about the lower Mississippi River was that the water came from the Ohio River and the mud came from the Missouri River. Hence, the Missouri River's nicknames was the "Big Muddy" and "Dark River,"  and the residents along it used to say the water of the Missouri River was "too thick to drink, too thin to plow."

The people of the upper Missouri River recognize that the volume of barge traffic on the Missouri River has fallen to the point that it is not a significant economic issue any more. Thus, these people north of the navigable section of the Missouri River would like to remove or at least de-emphasize navigation as a factor in deciding how to manage the Missouri River.

This move should be of interest to Louisiana. If the river can be managed in a way that increases sediment load in the river, this could aid Louisiana's efforts to restore the coastal wetlands. The reservoirs behind the large dams on the Missouri River trap sediment, but management techniques and construction techniques exist for flushing sediment through such reservoirs.

The impact that the operation of the Missouri River has on Louisiana should be considered in any new study of the Missouri River. This impact has not been considered in the past and that needs to change.

Erich P Rapp.

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Mr. Bill, the clay character made famous on Saturday Night Live now appears in public service announcements concerning Louisiana coastal wetland loss. The creator of Mr. Bill is Walter Williams. Williams in a New Orleans native who lived in New York City and Los Angeles from 1976 to 2001. He has now returned to New Orleans and lives in the French Quarter.

Williams is using his clay character to warn the public about the problems associated with coastal wetland loss in Louisiana. He is also making documentary films (without the Mr. Bill character) concerning the natural history of New Orleans and the loss of coastal wetlands in Louisiana.  

A profile of Mr. Williams and his efforts can be found in the USA Today newspaper in an article published on Wednesday March 12, 2008 entitled, La. wetlands hero has feet of clay.

Erich.

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The nutria, a rodent found in the coastal wetlands of Louisiana, are known for eating marsh grass and contributing to the loss of coastal wetlands. In recent decades, the nutria have eaten their way through hundreds of square miles of coastal wetlands.

The state of Louisiana began trying to control the nutria population in 2002 by offering a $5 per tail bounty for killing the rodent. The nutria was introduced into the Louisiana wetlands from South America in the 1930's. The 20 nutria brought to Louisiana in the 1930's bred an estimated 20 million animals within two decades.

For many years, this resulted in a profitable fur trade. In the 1960's and 1970's, trappers collected more than 1 million nutria pelts per year. In 1976 alone, trappers collected more than 1.8 million nutria pelts in Louisiana.

In the 1980's and thereafter, fur's popularity declined and the value of a nutria pelt fell from around $10 to about $1. This led to trapper's leaving the business and an explosion in the nutria population. By 2001, the nutria were damaging 81,000 acres a year of wetlands in Louisiana. Since the state bounty was placed on the nutria, the damage has declined to about 34,665 acres in 2007.

For more information on the nutria in Louisiana's wetlands, see the news article in the New Orleans Times Picayune published on February 25, 2008 entitled, Nutria Nation: marsh-eating critter rebounds in post-Katrina.

Erich P Rapp.

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While the "Dead Zone" in the Gulf of Mexico off of the coast of Louisiana is not strictly speaking a coastal wetlands loss issue, it is an important problem and one related to the coastal zone in Louisiana. It is thus worthy of some attention and thus the reason for this blog entry.

A dead zone forms off the coast of Louisiana each summer. It is called the dead zone because, the sea in the zone does not contain oxygen and cannot support aquatic life. In 2007, the dead zone reached a size of 7,915 square miles. This is an area about the size of New Jersey.

The dead zone results from agricultural fertilizer byproducts such as nitrogen running off of farm land into the Mississippi River and its tributaries. The nitrogen in the river is then discharged into the Gulf of Mexico. When the nitrogen is combined with warm waters in the Gulf of Mexico, the result is an excessive algae bloom. When the algae dies and decomposes, the process uses up all of the oxygen in the water and no aquatic life is able to live in the zone.

In recent times, the problem has been aggravated by increasing production of corn in the central part of the United States. The increased production has been necessary to supply growing global demand and to supply the corn necessary for ethanol production. Corn requires heavy fertilizer containing nitrogen.

The dead zone has been the subject of two published reports this month. One of the studies conducted by Simon Donner of the University of British Columbia and Chris Kucharik of the University of Wisconsin is found in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in an article entitled: Corn based ethanol production compromises goal of reducing nitrogen export by the Mississippi River. This article concludes that the increased corn production that has occurred to meet ethanol production goals set by Congress is increasing the size of the dead zone off of the coast of Louisiana.

The second item is a letter is found in the journal, Nature, and is entitled: Stream denitrification across bio mes and its response to anthropogenic nitrate loading. This article was written by a team of 31 scientists led by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. The lead author was Patrick Mulholland of Oak Ridge. In sum, this research suggests that streams and the bacteria in them have a natural capacity to remove nitrogen from fertilizer that is washed into the stream. Bacteria living in streams convert nitrates in the water into nitrogen gas which is release into the atmosphere. The process is called denitrification. This process can, however, be overwhelmed when large amounts of fertilizer are washed into a stream or river.

Erich P Rapp.

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Garrett Graves, the new director of the Governor's Office of Coastal Affairs announced at a the February 24, 2008 meeting of the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority that the Jindal administration planned a larger financial commitment from Louisiana for coastal restoration. Graves indicated that Louisiana could stop all other economic development initiatives if it were not prepared to do more to protect and restore the coast.

Graves also indicated that that the state was considering a number of larger scale projects that would be massive diversions from the Mississippi River. These projects include the artificial third delta and a large diversion in lower Plaquemines Parish.

The Jindal administration considers Louisiana under invested in coastal restoration and levee protection and seeks to change this condition. Of course, this change will also require a fundamental change in the way the Corps of Engineers moves forward with projects.

For more information on Graves comments at this meeting, see the Baton Rouge Advocate article published on February 25, 2008 entitled, Official: La to expand coastal commitment.

Erich P Rapp.   

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Researchers have developed a computer model for assessing large scale coastal restoration projects before they are built.  The computer model was recently presented at the annual conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston.

Since restoration of coastal wetlands in Louisiana will require delivering more of the sediment from the Mississippi River to the coastal wetlands, researchers have focused on creating a model that would determine how much land can be built from sediment available in the Mississippi River.

The idea for the computer model began when Robert Twilley, the director of the Wetland Biochemistry Institute at LSU saw a presentation by Gary Parker with the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. Parker's presentation concerned his abilities to model river deltas around the world. As a result of Twilley seeing this presentation, Twilley and Parker began discussing a computer model for the relationship of the Mississippi River with the surrounding coastal wetlands.

Twilley and Parker were then joined by Chris Paola of the University of Minnesota and David Mohrig of the University of Texas at Austin to form the team for the development of the computer model.

Using the growth of the delta at the mouth of the Atchafalaya River as a base, the team developed the computer model. The computer model suggests that by diverting 45% of the river's flow through two diversions, one could build between 270 and 345 square miles in about 30 years.

This computer model is discussed in an article published in the Baton Rouge Advocate on February 25, 2008 entitled Restoration effort aided by computer model.

That would be a good start to coastal wetland restoration in Louisiana. 

Erich P Rapp.

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The New Orleans Times Picayune published an editorial on Wednesday March 5, 2008 entitled, Editorial: Promises, not favors.  According to John Barry (author, Rising Tide), a member of the state's Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority (CPRA), the Bush administration has indicated that it was doing Louisiana a favor when it gave Louisiana a year to come up with $1.78 billion in matching funds for levee improvements and flood control projects.

Members of CPRA do not believe that Louisiana can come up with $1.78 billion on such a short time frame, and this problem could jeopardize construction of 100 year flood protection for New Orleans by 2011 as President Bush and the Corps have promised.

Barry urges the federal government to allow Louisiana a 30 year payment plan for providing its share of the cost of the flood protection and levee improvement plan. The size of this project is not typical and the match is outsized justifying the additional time.

The Times Picayune editors rightly point out that President Bush stood in Jackson Square after Hurricane Katrina and promised to do whatever was necessary to rebuild New Orleans. Stronger levees and healthy coastal wetlands are an essential part of rebuilding a thriving New Orleans. President Bush and his administration should live up to this promise.

Erich P Rapp. 

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U.S. Representative Charles Boustany believes Southwest Louisiana is not getting its fair share of funds for coastal restoration. Boustany recently sent a letter to Governor Jindal as well as the leadership of the state house and senate complaining that Southwest Louisiana is shortchanged in money allocation and attention from the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority (CPRA). Because of this, Boustany would like to change the make up of the CPRA board to allow more representation from Southwest Louisiana. The area of concern to Boustany is from Vermilion Parish to the Texas state line and includes the Chenier Plain.

Boustany's concerns have been voiced in news articles including articles in the Lafayette Daily Advertiser on February 18, 2008 entitled Boustany seeks equity for southwest Louisiana and on February 24, 2008 entitled Boustany fights coastal-funding inequity. 

Erich P Rapp. 

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The Baton Rouge Advocate published a letter on March 5, 2008 under the headline, Letter: Wetlands require urgent action. Kerry St. Pe, the program director for the Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary Program, wrote in the Baton Rouge paper that all stakeholders must join together to move quickly to restore coastal Louisiana.

St. Pe concludes that the state cannot afford delays that might be caused by strategies that could result in drawn-out disagreement. He emphasizes the adoption of proven technology on a large scale. In particularly, he suggests using existing sediment delivery technology such as dredges, pumps and pipelines need to be employed immediately. The land built through the sediment delivery processes must then be supported with small to medium size river diversions. These diversion will sustain the new land.  

St. Pe expresses concern about the disagreements arising from large scale river diversions. He views large scale diversions as potentially contentious and questions whether such diversion have long term benefits.

In sum, St. Pe thinks Louisiana should focus on the strategies where consensus exists.

Erich P Rapp. 

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The Bush administration's 2009 proposed budget for the Corps of Engineers includes $100,000 for a reconnaissance study to determine if the Corps of Engineers should buy more land in the Atchafalaya Basin for public access and flood damage reduction. The study would identify the needs, opportunities, and possibly the land parcels available for the government to buy.  The study is the subject of an article in the Lafayette Daily Advertiser published on February 16, 2008 entitled Atchafalaya Basin land buy study part of Bush bill.

The Corps owns approximately 50,000 acres in the basin and they are currently authorized to own up to 70,000 acres.

Erich P Rapp.

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The Corps of Engineers will soon begin work on the Lower Mississippi River Resource Assessment which was authorized in the Water Resource Development Act of 2000. The study will take two years and cost about $500,000. The study area includes the portion of the Mississippi River from Cairo, Illinois which is the confluence of the Ohio River with the Mississippi River to the mouth of the Mississippi River at the Gulf of Mexico. The study area includes 954 miles of the river and also includes 2.7 million acres of the river's natural floodplain (now protected from flooding by levees).

The study will consider aspects of the Mississippi River beyond navigation and flood control. The study will assess ways to enhance recreation, restore flood plain and restore aquatic habitat. The study will also consider some tributaries of the Mississippi River.

What Louisiana really needs is an assessment of the impact of management of the Mississippi River north of Louisiana on coastal wetlands in Louisiana. The scope of this study seems broad enough for such considerations, but will they be included?

The news coverage of this river assessment includes an article in the February 4, 2008 Memphis Commercial Appeal entitled River Resource Assessment will last two years and coast up to $500,000.

Erich.

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On February 17, 2008, Torbjorn E. Tornqvist of Tulane University and other researchers published a letter in the journal Nature Geoscience entitled Mississippi Delta subsidence primarily caused by compaction of Holocene strata. The research findings suggest that the Mississippi delta is sinking as much as one fifth of an inch per year, but that the sinking is mostly limited to the upper layers of sediment while the land beneath is more stable.

This research suggests that the high rate of subsidence is largely the result of compaction of the shallow sediment deposits from the last 10,000 years in the upper few hundred feet near the surface of the earth. These findings suggest that flood control structures that penetrate through the shallow sediment deposits and rest on the more stable foundation below would not subsidence as quickly.

News articles reporting on this research include: Science Daily in an article entitled Post-Katrina Rebuilding? Mississippi Delta Both Spongy and Stable published on February 22, 2008; and New York Times in an article in a section entitled Observatory with the article title Support for a Theory As to Why Land Sinks Along the Gulf Coast by Henry Fountain published on February 19, 2008.

Erich P Rapp

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