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

The United States Department of Agriculture runs the Louisiana Plant Materials Center in Galliano, Louisiana next to the airport. The Plant Materials Center plays an important role in coastal protection projects because they are assigned the task of finding suitable plants to use in areas where marshland is being rebuild or protected. The Center is very important to those working on coastal wetland projects, but largely unknown to the public. It is on 90 acres with greenhouses and fields to simulate marsh. The Center can test plants for many years before using them in coastal protection projects.

Dr. Richard Neill, the Center's manager and Garrett Thomassie, the assistant manager, are evaluating the plants that nature has given us and trying to determine which ones create the greatest soil stabilization in various environments. Some of the projects that they have worked on include projects for the Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary Program, Port Fourchon, re-vegetation of City Park in New Orleans, and re-vegetation of the Naval Air Station at Belle Chase.

If you are interested in learning more about the Louisiana Plant Materials Program, you can arrange a tour by calling (985) 475-5280. Also see, the Saturday June 21, 2008 article at WWL-TV entitled, Plant Center grows plants that halt coastal erosion.

Erich P Rapp.

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Concrete from the Twin Spans bridges will be dismantled in 2009 and used for a coastal protection project according to Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal speaking on Tuesday June 17, 2008. Jindal stated,

“Using material from the twin span bridges to build reefs like these is a first in Louisiana. In the past, limestone has been shipped in from out of state, but this historic project uses material already on hand and reduces the cost of building this valuable habitat.”

The Coastal Conservation Association of Louisiana, in partnership with Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development and NOAA Office of Coast Survey are planning to construct two inshore artificial reefs in Lake Pontchartrain. The reefs will be constructed from the concrete bridge rubble. They will provide a habitat for marine life on an area of about one to two acres.

For more information on this project, see the WWL article dated June 10, 2009 entitled, Concrete from Twin Spans to Help with Coastal Restoration.

Erich P Rapp.

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Andrew C Revkin writing for the New York Times describes a variety of recent research suggesting that the worldwide sea level rise is greater and faster than previously realized. His recent article was published on June 19, 2008 in the Dot Earth blog and is entitled: Seas Rising and Warming Faster than Realized. He has linked his article to a number of other interesting and relevant publications.

The worldwide sea level rise is a very important aspect of coastal land loss in Louisiana. This is a global condition overlaying a problem associated with the management of the Mississippi River system that cannot be ignored. Global sea level rise further demonstrates the urgency with which action is needed in Louisiana on coastal land building.

Erich P Rapp.

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Mark Schleifstein of the New Orleans Times-Picayune writing on June 19, 2008 in an article entitled, Levee authority backs national '8/29 Commission' investigation reported that the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority had passed a resolution asking Congress to create a 8/29 Commission to investigate the government's handling of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The resolution was proposed by John Barry, the author of Rising Tide.

Barry stated,

"I'm really asking that they take a comprehensive look at the entire Mississippi River system, the entire Mississippi valley, from New York state to Idaho," Barry said. "They should look, for instance, at the dams on the upper Missouri River in detail, because they have a real impact on the amount of sediment that's carried in the river, which has a real impact on the erosion of wetlands in Louisiana."

"If the nation understood the reality of the negative impacts on us in the metropolitan area of economic decisions upstream that were made in the national interest," it might lead to better decisions in flood control involving both protection from hurricanes and high rivers."

John Barry has said it exactly right. I am not aware of anyone speaking more closely to my own thinking on the causes and solutions related to the loss of Louisiana's coastal wetlands than John Barry. The idea of a 8/29 Commission is an excellent one. The scope he suggests addresses exactly the issues that I have been raising in this blog. The loss of coastal wetlands in Louisiana is a national problem caused by the management of the Mississippi River drainage basin by the federal government. 

I am not suggesting the federal government should not manage the Mississippi River drainage basin. I am just urging the federal government to acknowledge and take responsibility for their predominant role in causing coastal land loss in Louisiana.

Erich P Rapp. 

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The National Academies Press has published its First Report from the NRC Committee on the Review of the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Program. The NRC is the National Research Council which group acts as the official scientific adviser to the federal government. 

The report is available for free download as a .pdf file from the National Academies web site. This is an important report worth reading. This report is a response to the Corps' March 2008 report entitled, "Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Technical Report." In turn, the Corps' report was a response to a request from Congress for a category 5 hurricane protection plan for South Louisiana.

The Corps' report commendably speaks to the need to preserve and restore Louisiana's coastal wetlands in order to provide hurricane protection for the region. Nevertheless, one of the NRC committee's leading complaints about the Corps' plan is that it relies upon "sustaining the existing landscape" and yet the Corps has provided no evidence that it is possible to sustain the existing landscape. In this regard, the NRC committee complains that the Corps has not done the basic analysis of sediment available in the Mississippi River for a determination of what portion of the coastal wetlands in Louisiana can be sustained. If insufficient sediment exists in the Mississippi River water flow to sustain the existing coastal environment then the Corps' entire report is ill conceived.

If the sediment budget in the river is insufficient to sustain the existing coastal environment, the Corps and others will have to make some difficult decisions about what parts of the coastal landscape can be saved and what will not be saved. The Corps has not addressed this issue.

This missing analysis takes us to the core of the problem that I have written about in this blog since its outset. The most fundamental cause of coastal wetland loss in Louisiana, particularly south of New Orleans where below a certain point there are no levees, is lack of sediment in the Mississippi River water flow as the result of dams and reservoirs as well as locks and slack water pools in the northern parts of the Mississippi River drainage basin. These river structures reduce the sediment load in the river.

A reduced sediment load in the river is good for navigation and bad for coastal wetland building. The Corps must deal with a conflict between those competing interests. The Corps operating north of Louisiana wants a river with a reduced sediment load because that river condition makes it easier to maintain a navigation channel of a set depth. Less sediment in the river flow means less dredging of the navigation channel for the Corps.

The Corps in Louisiana has the same concern with navigation, but also has a need for sediment load for use in coastal wetland restoration and preservation. Those interests compete with one another to some extent. Unfortunately, coastal wetland protection and restoration in Louisiana does not get much, if any, consideration when the Corps makes a decision north of Louisiana adversely impacting on sediment load in the Mississippi River that will ultimately reach Louisiana. The interests of navigation prevail in such considerations north of Louisiana and most of those considerations within Louisiana.

The Corps needs to make a careful examination of the Mississippi River sediment load as it relates to proposed coastal wetland restoration and preservation projects. The Corps also needs to begin considering sediment load as it relates to Louisiana's coastal restoration and protection needs when it makes decisions along the entire course of the Mississippi River drainage system. Until this analysis is done and this consideration is given, no one will know what can really be done to preserve and restore Louisiana's coastal wetlands.

The current approach is to view coastal wetland preservation and restoration in Louisiana as a matter of regional decision making in relation to management of the Mississippi River in Louisiana. In reality, In reality, the preservation and restoration of Louisiana's coastal wetlands requires considered decision making across the entire Mississippi River drainage basin covering much of the continental United States.

Erich P Rapp.

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