Despite the headline-grabbing lawsuits pitting environmentalists and the oil industry against each other, those involved with coastal protection and restoration tell 10/12 Industry Report the tension between the two groups has been grossly oversimplified and their relationship is much more interdependent than is widely believed.
They also point out that the factors leading to coastal damage and land loss are too complex and broad to lay at the feet of just one industry.
“There are so many factors to how we got here today. It’s always easy to pit two different sides against each other, but it’s more complex than that. Mistakes were made across the board,” says Simone Maloz, executive director of Restore or Retreat, a nonprofit coastal advocacy organization that identifies and implements large-scale restoration projects across the Barataria and Terrebonne basins. “We have to learn from those mistakes and move forward.”
More important than assigning blame, Maloz and others say, is ensuring all stakeholders are committed to restoring and protecting the coast today.
“Most of the conversations where you see tensions are over what happened in the past,” says Scott Kirkpatrick, president of Coast Builders Coalition, a nonprofit trade association comprised of private sector companies in the business of restoring and protecting the Gulf Coast. “Certainly things happened in the past, but going forward we see more of a common mission to be responsible. There’s been a paradigm change in what’s happened along the coast.”
Many cite Hurricane Katrina—which wrecked havoc on Louisiana’s coast 11 years ago today—as the impetus for this paradigm shift. Katrina exposed the large-scale dire consequences and vulnerability of coastal land loss and resulted in reactionary expenditures of $250 billion. Without a healthy coast, future storms could replicate this.
“Attention, efforts and dollars to protect the coast have begun to flow since Katrina,” Kirkpatrick says. Before Katrina, between $100 million to $200 million annually was spent on coastal restoration and protection efforts, but post-Katrina this figure has risen to $1 billion annually, he says.
Hurricane Katrina also led to governance changes. After hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the state Legislature established the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority and required it to develop a plan for building a safe and sustainable coast. The state’s first Coastal Master Plan was published in 2007. Updates are required every five years, with the next update due next year.
Read the full feature, which also examines funding for restoration efforts and the industry it has created. Sign up for a free subscription to 10/12 Industry Report, which is published quarterly. Send your feedback, story ideas and company news to editor@1012industryreport.com.
