Coastal Restoration

When we were last in New Orleans (March 2014), we were hosted at the law offices of the firm who filed the lawsuit.  While lawsuits are always regrettable and it would be wonderful if we could settle our disagreements outside of this confrontational arena, this suit has been a long time in coming.  

The oil and gas industry have themselves agreed in the past that their operations were responsible for at least 32% of the wetland loss via not meeting their agreed to mitigation actions post-drilling (primarily filling in excavation channels/ripped up segments of wetland).  

The political opposition to this has been massive and overwhelming with multiple laws being proposed to legally ban the lawsuit before the plaintiffs have a chance to have their say in court.  If those same actors put as much energy into effective coastal management and restoration, we would all be better off.

This "risk reduction system" (we are not supposed to call it a "storm protection system" anymore) is certainly an improvement of our previous levels of protection, but to think that this will stop a "once in a century" storm is beyond laughable.  With a fraying network of wetlands, this city is more and more at the literal edge of the sea.  Not a good place to be given the elevational situation of the city (~50% is now below sea level thanks to subsidence, groundwater extraction, etc.).

Jumpt to 1:55 if you want to skip the ad for USGS, jump to 6 minutes if you want to see some of the sediment cores themselves.  The flood event dropped several cenitmeters of fresh sediment.  We need more floods like this!!!