USDA announces $50M for Gulf Coast river basins

The U.S. Department of Agriculture today pledged $50 million to a program designed to restore seven river basins from Florida to Texas, in an attempt to show that a blueprint for rebuilding the Gulf Coast’s fragile ecosystem is more than just another federal report. In Louisiana, the project will focus on the Barataria-Terrebonne estuary and the Mermentau basin. Once again, the focus will be on reducing the harm fertilizers have as they flow through rivers and streams into the Gulf of Mexico. In Mississippi, the program focuses on the Jourdan River, while in Texas the goal is to clean up the Guadalupe River basin. The USDA’s announcement accompanied the presentation of the final report of the Gulf Coast Ecosystem Restoration Task Force, a team established by President Barack Obama in the wake of the April 2010 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon and the subsequent oil spill; the report highlights decades of environmental decline in the Gulf of Mexico. The task force’s plan for reviving the gulf and the ecosystems and watersheds linked to it calls for rebuilding and conserving wetlands; cleaning polluted rivers and streams; strengthening communities along the storm-prone area and better preparing them for the storms that brew over the warm ocean waters; and allowing more sediment to naturally flow downstream so as to slowly rebuild barrier islands meant to provide natural protection from storms. Read the full story by The Associated Press here.