Justification for Action
Louisiana's 3.5 million acres of coastal wetlands represent about 40 percent of all of the coastal wetlands in the continental United States. These wetlands are extremely valuable to all citizens, not only because of their commercial, recreational and cultural values, but also because of the biological and physical process benefits they provide to coastal communities, the state and the nation. Important coastal wetland functions include:
- Buffering against hurricanes and storms
- Holding excess floodwaters during high rainfall or high tides
- Recharging groundwater aquifers used for drinking and irrigation
- Cleaning water by filtering pollutants and taking up nutrients
Coastal wetland habitats in Louisiana serve as the foundation for a $1 billion seafood industry, a $200 million sport hunting industry, a $14 million alligator industry, valuable fur resources, wild crawfish resources, hardwood timber and commercial livestock rangelands that equate to thousands of jobs crucial to the economies of many coastal communities. Numerous species of nonharvested fish and wildlife resources also depend directly on healthy coastal wetland ecosystems.
State oil and gas severance tax collections, in large part generated from exploration and production activities conducted in Louisiana's coastal wetlands, exceed $500 million annually. These tax revenues help the state provide vital community services such as roads, education and public health needs.
Because of the alteration of several important coastal wetland processes over the past 75-80 years, Louisiana has lost more than 600,000 acres of coastal vegetated wetlands and is now losing coastal wetlands at an average annual rate of 25-35 square miles per year (20,000-25,000 acres per year).
Processes that have had the most significant impact include:
- Leveeing of the Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers (stopped natural flow of sediment and fresh water into coastal marshes)
- Construction of large water control structures on the Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers (stopped natural river flow and new delta formation)
- Construction of the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway (altered natural flow of fresh water from the uplands to the coastal marshes south)
- Ship channel construction (changed shallow, normally slow-moving, meandering river/bayou systems into straight, deep channels that connect directly to more saline Gulf of Mexico waters)
- Access canal construction (increased saltwater intrusion and altered natural water flow/hydrology)