Polls have consistently showed Louisiana’s plans for restoring its vanishing coastline enjoy widespread public support across the state.
But WVUE-TV reports an LSU law professor specializing in climate issues argues the Coastal Master Plan fails to protect communities in south Louisiana from future hurricanes.
“This is the same way people don’t like to face illness, threats to their health,” says Edward Richards of the LSU Climate Change Law and Policy Project, who believes it reflects a state of denial. “It’s bad news.”
Like the 2012 version, the 2017 draft master plan spells out a $50 billion vision for restoring and protecting the coastline, stitching back together barrier islands and marsh through dredging projects, protecting shorelines, and diverting sediment into the marsh.
Richards argues the plan fails to protect against storm surges from large hurricanes, “which is what most people are concerned about when they think, ‘Let’s spend money to restore the coast.’”
He points out that a giant swath of south Louisiana has less than one foot of elevation, but says most of the region could be under as much as nine feet of water should a Category 5 storm make landfall.
The master plan is arguably the most detailed, science-based environmental restoration ever attempted, accounting for subsidence, sea level rise and other factors that will influence the coast in coming decades.
Planners openly concede they have no silver bullet, but argue the plan offers a future for a coast in crisis.
“We make no bones about it, we’re not able to restore our coast to what it looked like in the 1930s or the 1950s—or even the 1990s for that matter,” says Bren Haase, head of planning for the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority.
