Louisiana broke ground on a nearly $3 billion coastal restoration project that aims to rebuild the broken marshes on Plaquemines Parish’s west bank by reconnecting the area to the land-building power of the Mississippi River.
It marks the start of work on the state’s costliest land-building project to date — and the project most likely to withstand the accelerating rate of sea level rise as the state’s coast continues to sink.
Coastal advocates, scientists and state officials involved in the project for more than three decades gathered on a remote stretch of land Thursday, sheltering from the broiling sun beneath a big white tent.
In a decade, the land could look very different. A 2-mile-long, concrete channel diverting river water into Barataria Bay will likely span the area. A gated structure where the channel meets the Mississippi will open during the flood season when water levels are highest and send a cascade of up to 75,000 cubic feet of muddy water per second into the open water that now characterizes the Barataria Bay.
“The largest ever ecosystem restoration project in our state's history. And quite frankly, I'm not aware of one on this scale anywhere in the country,” said Gov. John Bel Edwards. “It's also a project that will once again show the rest of the nation, of the world, that Louisiana has what it takes to address the growing threat of land loss and sea level rise.”
The Barataria Basin has lost more than 430 square miles of what was once almost 1,500 square miles of land since 1932. The diversion is projected to rebuild and sustain 21 square miles of land by 2050 by mimicking the natural processes that built Louisiana over thousands of years.
The sediment diversion’s flush of fresh water, sand and mud will also help lengthen the lives of other state restoration projects planned in the basin that will be constructed by dredging sediment and pumping it into the area.
“Today, we're able to say that we're addressing our coastal crisis at its fundamental core. We're tapping into the power of the Mississippi River to turn away from a broken ecosystem on the decline,” said Bren Haase, the chairman of the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority Board.
During construction, the project will employ about 12,400 and result in a $1.4 billion increase in local sales, according to projections by the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority.
The Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion marks the culmination of more than 40 years of advocacy and research. Founded 35 years ago, the environmental nonprofit Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana released the first report to advocate for such a project.
“Today is momentous because we're moving from all this amazing planning and science to action,” said Kim Rehyer, the coalition’s executive director. “And then tomorrow we need to ask ourselves how fast can we do this. Because we really needed to do it yesterday.”Reducing damage
Transforming an ecosystem in slow decline will come with consequences. The influx of fresh water will be a shock to the system for fisheries that have entered Barataria Bay as it has grown saltier due to land loss and the encroachment of the Gulf of Mexico’s waters.
Paid for by settlement dollars from the 2010 BP oil spill, the project’s cost has grown by more than a billion dollars since 2021, now sitting at $2.92 billion. Of that, $305 million will go toward mitigating the harm to three groups: fishers who rely on the basin, neighborhoods that could see increased flooding and the bay’s dolphin population.
The decline of shrimp and oysters in the bay has long been a source of controversy surrounding the Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion. In 2021, the Plaquemines Parish Council voted on a resolution to oppose the project. A coalition of shrimpers, oyster harvesters and charter boat captains, among other fishers, have also pledged to sue the state and federal permitting agencies over the project.
On Thursday, despite turnover on the council, the stance of local officials remained the same. No Plaquemines Parish officials attended the groundbreaking ceremony, including the Parish President Keith Hinkley. Parish councilman Mitch Jurisich, who is also an oyster harvester, told WWNO the council boycotted the event.
Even some environmental activists like the local Sierra Club chapter have voiced concern over the project’s effect on dolphins — which were also harmed by the BP spill — and close proximity to communities like the mostly Black area of Ironton, though most large organizations have rallied behind the project.
The state plans to start spending $10 million of its mitigation money on fishers starting in the next month. Of that $10 million, $6 million will go toward improving public oyster seed grounds, $1 million toward developing Louisiana’s off-bottom oyster farming, $2 million for promoting the Louisiana shrimp industry over foreign imports, and $1 million will go toward improving docks and boat launches for subsistence fishermen in Plaquemines Parish.
The state will still have another $44 million available to spend on fisheries as the project is constructed and once it comes online.
Haase, the CPRA Board chair, also said the state has already begun surveying Plaquemines properties located outside the levee system that will experience more flooding as a result of the project. Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion project manager Brad Barth said his team has begun designing elevated roadways and bulkheads for communities like Myrtle Grove and Happy Jack.
The mitigation money will also go toward monitoring the health of Barataria Bay’s dolphin population, which can’t survive high levels of fresh water.The next five years
Constructing the Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion will take at least five years to complete, requiring traffic changes in lower Plaquemines Parish as the state builds a bridge over the channel it plans to carve out.
University of New Orleans coastal scientist Denise Reed has studied the region for decades and has long advocated for the need to reconnect the river to the marsh. She pointed out there’s still a long way to go before the diversion is operating.
“This is a great day clearly, but frankly the main celebration is the ribbon cutting, when we open the gates and the water flows,” Reed said at the event Thursday. “There could be other hiccups along the road. I don't want to get too confident until I see that water moving through that channel.”
The five-year timeline depends on good weather and limited delay from things like litigation from the fishing industry or construction and engineering complications.
Mid-Barataria is also just the first of several diversions planned in south Louisiana. The next largest, Mid-Breton, would divert Mississippi River water through Plaquemines Parish’s east bank. The Army Corps of Engineers is expected to release its draft environmental impact statement in July 2024.
By then, there will be a new governor of Louisiana. Edwards said the next person in line must “allow science to guide that decision-making.”
Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority Executive Director Greg Grandy speaks at that Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion groundbreaking ceremony on Aug. 10, 2023.
“You can't stop progress because there are certain people who are adversely impacted if overall, the benefits greatly outweigh whatever risks are associated with the project,” he said.
The BP money used for the Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion is also expected to run out in 2031, leaving Louisiana with limited revenue to continue implementing its Coastal Master Plan. Under his administration, Edwards has dedicated a third of state surplus funds to coastal restoration. On Thursday, he stressed the importance for state officials, from the next governor to the legislature, to find money to invest.
“We know we have a master plan that requires a minimum of $1 billion a year in order to deliver,” Edwards said. “We are in a race against time to rebuild our coast and to protect our communities, and these investments are an exciting part of that.”
