The long-controversial Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion project was officially canceled Thursday, bringing to an end the battle over the largest and most expensive effort to build land along Louisiana’s sinking coastline.
The Louisiana Coastal Restoration and Protection Authority confirmed the project would no longer be moving forward in a statement on Thursday. CPRA chairman Gordon Dove, in a phone call Friday, added that while CPRA “remains committed to coastal restoration,” the keystone project would be ended in its current form.
Proponents of the Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion emphasized the wealth of scientific research that went into the planning for the axed project, as well as the urgency of stemming Louisiana’s rapid wetlands loss with the nearly 20 square miles of land the project expected to build over the next 50 years.
Political battles over the increasing cost of the nearly $3 billion plan and its impact on industries such as oyster harvesting were key elements that led to the eventual death of the project. Those in the oyster industry laud it as a victory for their livelihoods, while environmentalists and scientists lament the loss as a massive backwards step for coastal restoration.
“ We needed Mid-Barataria, frankly, many decades ago. It was a really big deal that it was under construction finally, and we had the resources to do it. And now all of that is cast aside,” said Amanda Moore, senior director of the Gulf Program at the National Wildlife Federation.
Over a football field of land is lost along the coast every 100 minutes, attributed to a wide variety of factors including sea level rise, subsidence and overengineering of sediment-carrying rivers such as the Mississippi. Sediment diversions aim to reconnect the river with wetlands and mimic the way it naturally used to build land.
“The need has not changed. There's only one thing that has changed and that is the political landscape, so that is what ended this project,” said James Karst of the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana.
For Karst and many others, the cancellation of the project didn’t come as a surprise. Gov. Jeff Landry openly opposed the project, saying its impact on Louisiana fisheries would “break our culture,” as his administration took steps to slow its progress.
“We kind of knew it was going to get canceled,” said Peter Vujnovich, a third-generation oyster harvester based in Port Sulphur, adding that he’s “glad” for fewer “negative impacts on people that make a living out and about on the water.”
Vujnovich said his hopes for the success of future coastal restoration projects “depends on how they move forward. He added that he wants to see the forces who planned the Mid-Barataria project more actively involve communities and “include everybody,” like oyster harvesters, in future efforts.
The project’s budget did set aside $400 million to mitigate impacts to local communities, including the oyster industry, though many opponents felt it wasn’t enough.
“Hopefully, they’ll learn from this,” Vujnovich said.
Mitch Jurisich, chairman of Louisiana’s Oyster Task Force, gave a “hallelujah” in response to the project’s death. He credits Landry’s involvement as a turning point in the effort to sink the Mid-Barataria coastal restoration plan.
“Gov. Landry and chairman Gordy Dove with CPRA, they joined forces with us,” he said. “They basically turned the tide by stepping in with us.”
In a statement announcing the cancellation, the Trustees Implementation Group responsible for overseeing the funds provided for the project said CPRA determined “the project is no longer viable due to multiple factors, including the suspension of a federal permit by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and ongoing litigation.”
Construction of the project started in 2023, but it faces lawsuits from Plaquemines Parish and oystermen trying to halt it. In April, Dove ordered a pause on all work related to the project. A few weeks later, the Army Corps of Engineers suspended one of its permits.
In a letter to CPRA, the corps said it suspended the permit for a variety of reasons, including a shift in the state’s commitment to the project, the ongoing lawsuits and claiming the state “deliberately withheld” information the corps needed for its environmental impact statement.
The last factor instigated a social media firefight between Landry and former Gov. John Bel Edwards, with an X post from Landry harkening the issue to a real-life “John Grisham” novel exposé and balking at the high cost.
The project was already funded with $3 billion set aside in the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Trust, which came from the settlement from the BP oil spill disaster that devastated the Gulf Coast and the industries it supports in 2010.
In the past, Dove has suggested a smaller, cheaper version of the diversion, which could include channeling the Mississippi’s sediment and fresh water at a rate anywhere from 5 to 30 times less than the 75,000 cubic feet per second called for in the Mid-Barataria plans.
“We haven't heard any complete replacement plan … I think when you've got a problem of this magnitude, going with a smaller, less effective tool to do the work, you gotta think about whether that makes sense,” Karst said.
Jurisich said he is in favor of a smaller diversion.
“We may look at a small freshwater diversion here or there, just to kind of nourish the newly created land. But you know, we killed the beast that was going to kill us, and that's the best,” he said.
The state has already authorized more than $600,000 for the Mid-Barataria diversion, and the remainder will now be used to close out the project. The rest of the money will return to the Deepwater Horizon trust to be used for future coastal restoration projects, which will need to go through a new approval process.
Moore, with the National Wildlife Federation, said by canceling the Mid-Barataria project, the state is not only losing arguably the most important project in its Coastal Master Plan to fight land loss, but also the decades of planning and resources that went into it.
”Time is something that is really worrisome to us because it took us decades to get a project like this moving forward,” she said. “And for Louisiana's coast, I think you're gonna be looking at least a decade or more if you're gonna see something else come through.”
