Elected officials in communities along the Mississippi Gulf Coast are sounding the alarm bell over a large-scale sediment diversion project intended to help save coastal Louisiana marshland.
Earlier this week, both the Hancock County Board of Supervisors and the Bay St. Louis City Council, in separate meetings, passed resolutions opposing the Mid-Breton Basin sediment diversion, one of the major projects in the Coastal Restoration and Protection Authority’s ongoing coastal master plan.
Both measures call on Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant and members of the Mississippi Congressional delegation to oppose the $1.4 billion project and the issuance of federal permits needed for its construction. The resolutions also call on Congress to repeal one law and defeat another that would allow the Mid-Breton project to go forward.
The Hancock County board also authorized the county to work with the St. Bernard Parish-based nonprofit Gulf Coast Resource Coalition to try to stop the project. The agreement says the coastal projects proposed by Louisiana “could extremely and negatively impact Hancock County’s coastal resources, communities and economy.”
Coalition Director George Cavignac, a former St. Bernard Parish council member, says coastal parishes in Louisiana have long had concerns about the impact of diversions on the state’s fisheries, and officials in both St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes have gone on record with their opposition. Having Mississippi officials add their voices to the chorus only strengths their case.
“These projects, despite the marketing that the CPRA and environmental groups have done,will be detrimental to our fisheries and our culture,” he says. “There is no debate over what it will do to the fisheries: It will finish them off.”
Concern over Louisiana’s efforts to salvage and restore eroding marshland using sediment diversions have intensified since early summer, when the Bonnet Carre Spillway was opened for the third time in two years and subsequently blamed for the death of dozens of dolphins and sea turtles along the coast.
CPRA Executive Director Bren Haase says he’s aware of the concerns raised by the coalition and local governments in Mississippi and of the apparent impact opening the Bonnet Carre has had on fisheries in recent months. But he says there are key differences between opening the spillway and the planned diversion.
“The Bonnet Carre was flowing at a rate of 215,000 cubic feet per second,” Haase says. “The Mid Breton would max out at 75,000 cubic feet per second so it’s much less water. … I understand the concerns but I think there are a lot of misconceptions about where we are in the process.”
Haase says it will take at least five years before the project is permitted and that it must first undergo a rigorous environmental impact study, adding “we’re six to eight years before water is flowing.”
Between now and then, Haase says the CPRA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will continue to study the issue and work with Mississippi officials.
In the meantime, Cavignac says other local governments in Mississippi are increasingly interested in the project and getting involved
“Harrison County and the Biloxi City Council have contacted us to follow up with them and put us on their agenda,” he says.
