The Caminada Headland—a narrow slice of land roughly 13 miles long and 65 miles wide near Port Fourchon—just might be the most important piece of the North American continent, Politico magazine reports in a new feature.
The beige and green strip of land is a barricade protecting a busy seaport serving more than 90% of deepwater oil and gas activities in the Gulf of Mexico.
But in the 2005, the strip was washed away when Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Louisiana coast. Restoring it before the next major hurricane was a priority.
Today, Politico reports, Caminada Headland is a robust new island backed by thick, healthy marshes, thanks to a $216 million project launched by Rep. Garret Graves and the state of Louisiana.
But what looks like a success story from the window of a seaplane was, to Graves and nearly everyone else involved, an expensive and exhausting struggle—one that raises serious questions about America’s ability to grapple with the increasing problems caused by rising coastal waters and more destructive storms as the climate changes.
In fact, Graves and others worry that Washington’s systems for protecting communities against weather disasters haven’t gotten better since that 2005 disaster, and in many ways may be worse.
