Eroding coastal parish aims to save itself by building land

The Plaquemines Parish Council has voted in favor of a bond issue valued at between $50 million and $65 million to finance an effort to save the coastal parish from disappearing into the Gulf of Mexico. The money would be used to hire contractors to pump Mississippi River sediment into open water surrounding the sparsely populated citrus and ranch country south of New Orleans, an effort parish leaders hope will build new marshland and forested ridges that can serve as buffers, mitigating the effects of hurricanes on the parish. “We can’t wait,” Parish President Billy Nungesser says of Thursday’s 9-0 vote. “We decided to go it alone. It’s an emergency.” Plaquemines Parish, with a population of about 23,000, is essentially a 70-mile-long strip of land hugging the Mississippi River. The plan is to lease an electric-powered dredge designed specifically for Plaquemines so it can take coarse sediment lying 90 feet deep in the Mississippi’s channel and pump it through pipelines into open water just outside levees. Once ridges are built, the parish wants to plant trees on them to slow down hurricane surge. The parish still needs a number of federal and state permits for the first ridge. Also, the Plaquemines plan may be at odds with a new 50-year, $50 billion state master plan designed to coordinate efforts to restore coastal Louisiana. Read the full story here.