WRDA Funding: A Crucial Step In Saving Louisiana's Coast

For nearly 70 years Louisiana’s complex system of coastal marshes, waterways, lakes and barrier islands has been radically changed by the influence of man and industry. While land subsidence and sea level rise have taken their toll, the development of oil and gas resources, the shipping industry and flood control levees have exacted a price as well. Countless channels and canals have been carved through protective reefs and deep into freshwater wetlands, redirecting flows and providing avenues for salt-bearing tides. Spoil banks and levees have isolated marshes from their natural supplies of fresh water, sediment and nutrients, causing vegetation to fail and exposing a weakened environment to erosion. As a result, this remarkable ecosystem is being converted to open water at the rate of 25 to 35 square miles a year—the equivalent of a football field every 30 minutes—putting southern Louisiana on track to lose 1,000 additional square miles of coastal wetlands by the year 2050.

As disheartening as those figures are, the story of Louisiana’s disappearing coast goes beyond the loss of land. It’s about an American environment that’s vanishing at a catastrophic rate. It’s about communities, industry, infrastructure, wildlife habitat, fisheries and economies at risk. And, most important, it’s about the loss of the national treasure found in coastal Louisiana’s unique culture.

Faced with this grim reality, Congress responded in 1990 with the passage of the Coastal Wetlands Planning, Protection and Restoration Act (CWPPRA). Over the next ten years, this crucial piece of legislation provided up to $53 million per year in federal funding to protect and restore coastal wetlands in Louisiana. More than 100 projects of varying size were started or completed with others identified, evaluated and recommended for implementation. These projects are expected to protect 86,000 acres of wetlands in nine hydrologic regions across Louisiana’s coastal zone.

With the CWPPRA effort well under way, private citizens, local governments, state and federal agency personnel and the scientific community began the massive task of developing a comprehensive, ecosystem-based plan to address coastal wetland loss throughout southern Louisiana. In December 1998, this group completed Coast 2050: Towards a Sustainable Coastal Louisiana, in which they referenced the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana (1998) in saying “. . restoration requires a single coastal plan with a clear, overarching strategic vision; a process for ensuring effective public input to restoration planning; and integration of restoration projects into the overall coastal management system.” Coast 2050 successfully achieved each of those objectives. From lessons and data gathered from CWPPRA, from new quantitative techniques for projecting land-loss patterns and the first coastwide assessment of subsidence rates, the plan outlined a conceptual framework that clearly articulates the future course of coastal restoration.

It was, however, beyond the scope of Coast 2050 to produce the technical analysis to put projects on the ground. Consequently, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources began to develop the Louisiana Coastal Area Feasibility Study. This study, which will contain the engineering and technical work absent from Coast 2050, is a key step in securing funding under the Water Resources Development Act 2002 (WRDA)—the nation’s single largest source of water-project dollars. Because WRDA is so crucial and the feasibility study plays such an important role in the funding justification, this special issue of WaterMarks will introduce and highlight some of its essential components.

The Thrust of the Study

As an integral step in the overall restoration plan, the Louisiana Coastal Area Feasibility Study takes into consideration the need to:

• Design restoration projects to mimic natural landforms and processes as closely as possible;
• Protect communities and infrastructures such as highways, pipelines, wells and ports;
• Proceed from the perimeter to the interior of a basin, building the framework for landforms that will facilitate interior restoration;
• Develop a computer model to give insight into water movements, allowing better project planning.

Over the next 10 years, the Louisiana Coastal Area Feasibility Study will cover the nine Coastal Area Risk hydrologic basins that represent the Louisiana coast. The first phase of this coast-wide effort focuses on the Barataria Basin.

The Barataria Basin was chosen as the starting point because it is experiencing the highest rate of land loss in the Louisiana coastal area— estimated at 11 square miles per year. From 1932 to 1990, 35 percent of its marsh was converted to open water—a land loss approaching 360,000 acres. A “best estimate” predicts that an additional 19 percent of the remaining marsh, including 32 percent of the saline marsh, will be lost by 2050. As the marshes vanish, the protective barrier islands on the basin’s coast are disappearing as well—succumbing to some of the highest shoreline erosion rates in the nation.

It is expected that without increased restoration efforts, the barrier islands within the study area will be gone by 2050, and the headland will continue to retreat at an average rate of 44 feet per year.

The Barataria study will develop project plans to restore the fringe of the basin and develop a hydrologic and hydrodynamic computer model that will enable a basinwide assessment of other ecosystem restoration strategies. The study is divided into three closely interrelated components:

1. Barrier Shoreline Restoration,
2. Wetlands Creation and Restoration and
3. Hydrologic and Hydrodynamic Model Development.

The first component, Barrier Shoreline Restoration, will develop projects that sustain the ecological attributes of the basin, including a unique arrangement of habitats such as shallow intertidal zones, beaches, dunes, back-marshes, bays and passes. The barrier shoreline is the first line of defense against the Gulf of Mexico’s waves and salinity, providing protection to the remaining marsh and aquatic habitats behind the islands. The second component, Wetlands Creation and Restoration, will develop projects to create and restore the basin’s marshes on the southwestern fringe, as well as wooded stop-over habitat for neotropical migratory birds. The third component, Hydrologic Model Development, will build a basin-wide hydrologic and hydrodynamic computer model of the water circulation and salinity patterns within the entire basin. This model will be used as the operations and planning guide for both existing and future projects, and freshwater diversions.

Scientists and engineers will learn a great deal during the first phase of their work in the Barataria Basin. For example, the hydrologic and hydrodynamic computer model will be used extensively as projects planned for the basin interior are evaluated, constructed and placed in operation. The model and the lessons learned will then be exported for use in other basins of the coastal zone.

Public Involvement

Consistent with the approach in developing the Coast 2050 Plan, public comment on the feasibility study has been instrumental in establishing concepts, goals and strategies. During the early stages of planning, project managers held a series of public meetings.

• In March and May 2000, the public was provided information and asked for general guidance during two informal meetings in Thibodaux. Additionally, two presentations made to the Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary Program Management Conference were attended by many stakeholders from business and industry, federal and state agencies and nonprofit organizations.
• In June 2000, two formal public scoping meetings were held during the formation of the study’s environmental impact statement for the Barrier Shoreline Restoration and Wetland Creation and Restoration components. Comments in these meetings formed the basis for much of the planning that guided development of the restoration measures.
• In February and March 2001, as restoration project plans were formulated, formal public meetings were held in Baton Rouge, Larose and Belle Chasse. Project managers provided information about study areas and objectives, and solicited information on alternate locations and methods.

Two additional series of public meetings will be held. The first will seek comment before finalizing a recommended plan. The second will be held when the plan is completed, prior to its submission to Congress. For more information on the Feasibility Study, see www.coast2050.gov.