On august 29 2021, Hurricane Ida slammed the Louisiana coast with category 4 winds.
Over a million people lost power in the state in all the storm caused nearly 100 billion dollars in
damages. Luckily cities like New Orleans avoided massive flooding unlike when Hurricane Katrina
brought in catastrophic tidal surges exactly 16 years earlier. Along the coast it was another
story. Communities such as Pointe-aux-Chenes lost 68 of their 80 homes. This village of
mostly indigenous fishermen saw roofs blown off, houses ripped open, and entire buildings leveled.
"It's heartbreaking so much devastation. We've never had a hurricane like this
never." But for those on the coast this won't be the last time wind and water threaten their homes.
Louisiana loses about a football field of land every hour. Sea level rise and stronger and
wetter storms have eaten away at its shores for decades. "Coastal Louisiana is really facing an
existential crisis. For the last 100 years or so we've lost almost 4,000 square miles
of our coastal wetlands. Those wetlands are where lots of people live. It's where livings are made.
It's the basis for our culture and our heritage here in south Louisiana."
To save itself the state is undertaking the biggest engineering plan in its history,
the mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion Program, a two billion dollar project
that would divert the Mississippi River and rich land-building sediment to its eroding marshland.
The project is run by the state's Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority or the CPRA.
The agency was formed after Katrina. It manages the 50-year, $50-billion-dollar master plan--a
series of projects throughout Louisiana designed to save the state from sinking into the gulf.
"And we are studying those projects and actually if they can actually work and what changes they
may bring to the coast." "The idea behind those projects is to mimic Mother Nature
and what she did to build southeast Louisiana in the first place. When the river would flood
water would overflow its banks sediment would settle out wetlands would be built.
We've isolated the river from those wetlands now and we've we've seen the the consequences
of that. We're experiencing tremendous land loss along our deltaic plain. So these projects would
reconnect the river with that delta deltaic plain." The diversion will flood fresh water
into the Barataria basin about an hour south of New Orleans. The structure will be two miles
long and sixteen hundred feet wide cutting through the Mississippi River in Plaquemines Parish. Once
built the diversion will be open at specific times during the year when levels of sediment are high
at 75 000 cubic feet per second the massive water pressure could bring enough sediment
into the area to reform land. "The benefits of building a project sort of that scale
are that you can restore wetlands at that scale and at the scale that's meaningful to
coastal Louisiana, so we think anywhere from you know 21 up to you know over 35, 36 square miles
of new wetlands can be created in the Barataria basin as a result of implementing this project."
Haase admits that these growth projections are just that--projections--so to convince
the state that real land would grow the CPRA relied on another engineering feat.
This is the Center for River Studies at Louisiana State University. The center
houses the 10,000-square-foot lower Mississippi River physical model, a replica based on the
topography of the real Mississippi River delta. This $4 million project was built with support
from the CPRA. One of its many uses is to predict the future of the Mississippi River.
"We use the lower Mississippi River physical model to help the state understand how how the river
flows how the sediment moves, how that sand bed load sand moves down the river to help them with
their kind of future planning maybe how they might need to operate the river sediment diversions."
"So we make an efficiency equation based on previous pump data."
The model can precisely replicate the movement of water and sediment along the Mississippi River
one hour of water flow in the model simulates about one year real river flow
a physically accurate time lapse. Researchers can regulate water pressure and the amount of sediment
moving to match real-time measurements along the Mississippi and critically this allows them to
forecast how much sediment will accumulate over years and even decades the model can show what
would happen if the river was allowed to flow without its current levy restrictions. "And
so by looking at experiments or looking at the system over 10, 25, 50 years, we can look at how
sea level rise is going to impact the hydraulics and the transport of that sand. We can understand
how operating different ways to operate the river sediment diversions is going to change the way the
sand is moving." Importantly Haase says that the land growth would continue well beyond the
50 years the agency has calculated just as long as sediment continues to be fed into the basin.
Not everyone is happy with this plan. The basin features salt and brackish water that allows for
certain sea life to thrive. It's rich with white and brown shrimp and oysters and is home to a
multi-billion dollar commercial and recreational fishing industry. If the sediment division is
built countless gallons of fresh water will pour into the basin each year drastically decreasing
its salinity. The saltwater fishing industry here would be destroyed. "No one wants to save
the coast more than people that live and work on the coast. We know something has to be done,
but we just don't want our resources and our livelihoods and our culture and our heritage
to be eliminated." George Ricks is a long-time fisherman and charter boat captain he formed the
non-profit Save Louisiana Coalition to fight the diversion project. Ricks says the group has 1,000
members including crabbers, shrimpers, marina owners, and coastal residents. If the basin is
filled with fresh water, the sea life will leave or die, he says and all the fishermen will have
to follow them or risk going out of business. "It's going to eliminate the oysters; it's going
to eliminate our brown shrimp; it's going to cause socio-economic hardship on low-income families."
The Army Corps of Engineers issued a multi-year environmental impact study of the proposed plan.
It confirmed what local fishermen fear--that the marine life and ecology of the bay would be
disrupted. The Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority also agrees. As part of the proposed
budget, it has earmarked millions to support the fishermen who would be affected by the project.
These funds would be used outfit boats with equipment for longer trips further
out to saltwater estuaries. The bay would be forever changed,
but the agency says that the state is at a point where something must be done immediately.
"The future of coastal Louisiana, if we don't implement big bold projects like this is really
dire, and i don't mean to be alarmist about it, but anybody who's spent any time along our
coast whether you're fishing, hunting, working, whatever it is that you're doing along our coast,
have seen the changes to our coast. We know it's going away. I don't think we can be successful
without using the tools and the resources in the Mississippi River to help restore our coast."
"We're not against trying to build land. We know you know we want to build land we need land,
but we need it now and you we have no problem with the sediment everyone knows that we
need the sediment it's the delivery system that we have a problem with."
As of now the Army Corps of Engineers is responding to comments made to its environmental
impact report. A revised report may come as early as March 2022, followed by federal approval to
begin work on the diversion later in the year. It's unlikely that Ricks and the fishermen will
be able to stop the project from moving forward. The scientific community has overwhelmingly
supported the plan. A group of 55 scientists and engineers including Tulane University's Emily Farr
signed a letter pushing for its approval. "I think the idea of a division is really
really good because it gets at the root of the problem, which is you know we have lost connection
with our rivers because of channelizing them. We are we're losing land and if we if we don't
get at the root of the problem in terms of you know increasing that sediment input so that we
can build land, the coast is just going to keep disappearing and water is going
to keep moving inward and people are going to be uprooted. Communities are going to have to move
and I think I mean that's a very real a real result that we have to start thinking about."