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

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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Ducks Unlimited is a friend to the movement for the restoration of Louisiana's coastal wetlands. Bob Drew, the manager of conservation programs for Ducks Unlimited has properly stated that state and federal agencies are the only ones that have the capacity to implement large scale coastal restoration programs which Ducks Unlimited supports.

For this reason among others, Ducks Unlimited announced the appointment of Jennifer Grand as the Louisiana government affairs director for Ducks Unlimited. Grand is based out of their Lafayette office. For more information on the appointment of Ms Grand, see the April 10, 2008 article in the Lafayette Advertiser entitled: Wetlands warrior: Conservation organization creates post.

Erich P Rapp.

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As I have written many times before, the principal cause of coastal wetland loss is the reduction of sediment load in the Mississippi River. The reduction in sediment load has been caused primarily by the construction of locks and dams in the Mississippi River drainage basin, and the dams in the Missouri and Arkansas River systems are the most significant.

For the Corps of Engineers representatives working north of Louisiana, the reduction in the sediment load is a good thing. If your primary concern is navigation in the river system, a river with little sediment load is a good river. It means the Corps does not have to dredge the river bed as much.

In contrast for the Corps of Engineers in New Orleans tasked with coastal wetland restoration, a river with a limited sediment load makes their restoration job harder. Of course, the Corps in New Orleans is also given the task of maintaining navigation on the Southern course of the river. Thus, the Corps in New Orleans also prefers the smallest possible sediment load for management of their navigation responsibilities.

Which objective does the Corps serve? How do they decide which objective to serve and when? As far as I can determine, the Corps gives no consideration to the sediment load in the Mississippi River system needed for restoration and preservation of Louisiana's coastal wetlands when the Corps makes decisions about river management north of Louisiana. As a practical matter, the Corps cannot serve both objectives with no oversight and be expected to preserve and restore Louisiana's coast. The navigation interest extends for most of the river system course and the focus on preservation and restoration of coastal wetlands is an active part of decision making only in the Southernmost section of the river. Preservation and restoration of coastal wetlands loses and navigation wins in that internal competition at the Corps. As a practical matter, it cannot be any other way. 

The responsibilities for decision making need to be split and a neutral third party needs to be responsible for balancing the two interests.

A good recent news article expressing concern with the negative impact of sediment load on navigation can be found in the Baton Rouge Advocate on April 12, 2008. The article was written by John A Colvin and is entitled, Mississippi River sediment piling up.

Erich.

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As the Corps of Engineers closes gates on the Bonnet Care spillway and the water level on the Mississippi River goes down, Louisiana has lost a once in a decade opportunity to divert an enormous amount of river sediment into the coastal wetlands of Louisiana. Times of high water on the Mississippi River are very important times in the coastal wetlands land building process. Unfortunately, we were not prepared to take advantage of this rare opportunity and the loss of coastal wetlands continues.

According to Chris Kirkham's Friday April 18, 2008 article in the New Orleans Times Picayune entitled, State may be spilling coast's rescue, the recent high water event on the Mississippi River brought 900,000 tons of river sediment through the state and into the Gulf of Mexico.

If the Corps of Engineers had been better prepared to divert a large portion of the sediment into the coastal wetlands, the condition of the coastal wetlands might have improved this spring. The Corps of Engineers needs to change the river management to take advantage of the next high water level event.

Erich. 

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The National Academy of Sciences has appointed a committee of  the country's top scientists to peer review the coastal protection and restoration plans of the Army Corps of Engineers in Louisiana. The National Academy of Sciences is the scientific adviser to the federal government.

At a meeting on Thursday April 3, 2008, the National Academy peer review committee and the Corps held a public meeting concerning the peer review committee's work. The peer committee was critical of the Corps' plans in a number of respects.

The question being considered at the meeting was whether the Corps plans to protect and restore the Louisiana coast will work. The National Academy scientists began by questioning the Corps basic strategy which is to maintain the coast as it currently exists. The National Academy scientists questioned why the Corps was not considering other alternatives such as creating new land and allowing some areas to erode.

The National Academy scientists also questioned whether the Mississippi River carried enough sediment today to maintain the coast as the Corps suggests that its plan would do.The scientists seemed surprised and upset that the Corps' representatives did not have a basic knowledge of how much sediment the river carried and had not taken steps to determine if the available sediment was sufficient to achieve the Corps' objectives. 

One of the National Academy scientists questioning the Corps was Robert Meade. Meade is retired from the United States Geological Survey. Meade is well known in the scientific community for his knowledge of sediment transport in rivers and particularly in the Mississippi River. The representatives of the Corps might serve themselves well to read some of the scientific articles that Meade has previously published on sediment transport in rivers.  

The question of sediment supply in the Mississippi River is critical to the success of any coastal protection and restoration project in Louisiana. The sediment load in the Mississippi River has declined sharply since the 1930's as a result of the extensive construction of dams and locks in the Mississippi River drainage system. Dams trap sediment in the reservoir behind the dam and the locks trap sediment in the slack water pool behind the lock. The most significant sediment transportation reductions have occurred in the Missouri River and Arkansas River which are tributaries of the Mississippi River.

For navigation purposes, sediment in the Mississippi River is a nuisance that requires dredging. Much of the Corps operations in the Mississippi River drainage system are centered upon navigation. This means that for most purposes north of Louisiana on the Mississippi River and its tributaries, the Corps would like to see as little sediment transport in the river as possible. This desire, however, runs counter to the needs of coastal Louisiana. These navigational needs have in the past and continue today to trump the coastal restoration and protection needs of Louisiana. When the Corps considers how it will build and operate projects north of Louisiana in the Mississippi River drainage basin, the sediment transportation needs of Louisiana's coast are not typically considered.

Congress had asked the Corps to deliver the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Plan in December 2007. Now the plan will not be delivered until December 2008. Further, Congress had asked the Corps to identify a set of coastal protection and restoration projects that could be started quickly. Instead, the Corps has now stated that its December 2008 plan will not "include the specific identification of a detailed plan." Instead, the Corps' report will include aspects that require additional study before Congress can fund and the Corps can begin construction of the projects ultimately included in the plan.  

The National Academy scientists led by Robert Dalrymple, a civil engineering professor at John Hopkins University also questioned this "further study" approach.  Dalyrmple suggested that Congress might have been trying to create a sense of urgency after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita for more immediate action.   

The National Academy scientists also questioned why the Corps report did not include a major diversion of the Mississippi River south of New Orleans as many scientists and environmental groups have recommended. Instead the Corps report will suggest a number of smaller diversions. 

For a more detailed description of this meeting, see Mark Schleifstein's article in the New Orleans Times Picayune of Saturday April 5, 2008 entitled: Reviewers Grill Corps on Coast Plans. 

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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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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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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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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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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A recent article in the Geophysical Research Letters entitled, Post-glacial sediment load and subsidence in coastal Louisiana by Erik R. Ivins, Roy K Dokka, and Ronald G. Blom concluded that heavy sediment deposited in the Mississippi River delta at the end of the last ice age has caused coastal Louisiana in the Mississippi River delta to sink. This process is expected to continue for hundreds of years. The process will likely cause the area in question to subside over three feet in the next two hundred years.

The sinking of this land will likely be compounded by a general sea level rise from global warming. These factors will make the area more vulnerable to hurricanes and tropical storms. Of course, the hurricanes and tropical storms will then themselves do further damage to the coastal wetlands.

News Accounts related to this research paper can also be found at;

Associated Press: Sediment Make New Orleans Sink - February 1, 2008

Environmental News Service: Ancient Glacial Sediments Drag Down Louisiana's Sinking Coast - February 10, 2008 

Erich P Rapp

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Although efforts to stem coastal wetland loss in Louisiana are already grossly underfunded, the Corps of Engineers is seeking reimbursement for a part of the cost of dredging the Mississippi River to maintain the navigation channel from the budget for coastal restoration projects authorized and funded pursuant to the Breaux Act. See the editorial in the New Orleans Time Picayune on Monday February 18, 2008 and the related article in the New Orleans Times Picayune on Thursday February 14, 2008.

The Mississippi River Commission, which is related to and controlled by the Corps of Engineers, is taking the position that the State of Louisiana and the Corps of Engineers must pay for any increase in dredging costs that result from any coastal restoration project in Louisiana that diverts water and sediment from the Mississippi River.

Officials for the State of Louisiana believe that the transfer of this cost to the Breaux Act coastal restoration projects will effectively shut down the restoration projects.

Interestingly, Garret Graves, the Chairman of the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority and member of the Breaux Act task force suggested that perhaps the Corps should be responsible for the damage to the Louisiana coastal wetlands that resulted from the Corps management of the Mississippi River.

Melanie Goodman, the Corps' Breaux Act program manager replied that actions related to navigation "a century ago" which are damaging the coastal wetlands in Louisiana are in the past and not subject to reimbursement.

Of course, this entire blog is dedicated to the idea that the Corps is making decisions and undertaking actions everyday that adversely impact the Louisiana coastal wetlands and that the continuing series of interconnected decisions dating back many years is, in fact the responsibility of the Corps of Engineers and the federal government.

The Corps' two part defense is that it did not know they were damaging the coastal wetlands of Louisiana many years ago when they built dams and levees on the Mississippi River and its tributaries. This is, of course, not true. The Corps has known since the 19th century that the coast of Louisiana was subsiding and that the sediment from the Mississippi River offset the subsidence.

The additional implication from the Corps' claim about the past is that the Corps is not taking new actions today that adversely impact on the coast of Louisiana. This is also not true. The Corps makes management decisions about the Mississippi River and its tributaries such as the Missouri River and the Ohio River, everyday that deny or reduce sediment transport to the coast of Louisiana. In many ways, an analytical disconnect exists between management of the more northern portions of the Mississippi River drainage basin and the coast of Louisiana. The analysis of Corps projects in the Missouri River or the upper Mississippi River or the Ohio River almost never consider the impact of these projects on sediment transport to the coast of Louisiana, and those decisions and actions continue day after day and year after year up to the present and likely far into the future. The Corps' suggestion that the damage they have caused to Louisiana's coast is the result of actions far in the past is simply not true. It is also the result of events planned and executed in the present.

Erich P. Rapp.

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On January 10-11, 2008, a two day conference on the Atchafalaya River was held in Baton Rouge. Over 150 faculty members from Louisiana universities, representatives of various state and federal agencies and interested individuals attended the conference. The purpose of the meeting was to review what people know about the river and its surrounding environment, to report on recent and ongoing research related to the river, and to identify information gaps that have a negative impact on decision making by land and water managers and government policy makers. The program included 30 presentations on research being conducted in relation to the Atchafalaya River and the surrounding basin

The Atchafalaya River is a 140 mile long distributary channel of the MIssissippi River. The delta at the Gulf end of the river is the only actively building delta in the Gulf of Mexico. The Atchafalaya transports 100% of the Red River sediment and 25% of the Mississippi River sediment. Because the gates at the Old River Control structure which joins the Mississippi River and the Atchafalaya River do not trap sediment in the way that other locks and dams do, the Atchafalaya River delta is allowed to continue a building process from the deposit of sediment.  Over time not only is the river delta building but the Atchafalaya basin itself is also naturally filling in and evolving from open water to cypress swamp to bottomland forest.

The delta building process that continues for now in the Atchafalaya is the same process that has ceased to function in the Mississippi River delta. This failure of this process has been the principal cause of the loss of coastal wetlands in Louisiana which, of course, is the subject of this blog. The study of the ongoing delta building process in the Atchafalaya river and basin is thus worthwhile to better understanding events in the Mississippi River delta.   

Erich.

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