LAFAYETTE, La. – As scientists review aerial photographs of devastation, the evidence of the next huge challenge facing the Gulf Coast jumps out at them: Katrina ripped through the coastline’s few remaining barrier islands, and with the hurricane season only half over, New Orleans is naked to the ravages of future storms.
“The entire delta is gone, destroyed,” said James Johnston, a biologist who coordinates the study of Louisiana’s coastline at the National Wetlands Research Center.
For years, coastal engineers have warned about destruction of the region’s wetlands and sand barrier islands that once acted as nature’s speed bumps against waves and storm surge.
Now, officials from Louisiana are begging Washington to help shore up these natural buffers so that the inundated city of New Orleans will have a chance once it is rebuilt.
“These barrier islands and wetlands are our first line of defense from hurricanes,” said Sidney Coffee, who heads Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco’s coastal policy office. “This needs to be treated as an emergency. We need everyone to recognize that restoration efforts must begin immediately.”
People who have spent years pushing for more federal dollars for wetlands restoration lament how the tragedy has unfurled – precisely as predicted.
“We used to say, we either pay now or later. We are in the later part,” said Valsin Marmillion, former chief of staff to of retired Sen. John Breaux, D-La. “When you repair things in an orderly way, it costs much less than to have them upended and then have to be put back together.”
The problem is that the southern edge of Louisiana slowly is sinking into the Gulf of Mexico and a channelized Mississippi River deposits its mud and sand directly into the gulf rather than rebuilding marshes and barrier islands with a fresh layer of sediment as it did for millenniums.
As a result, Louisiana is losing about 24 square miles a year of its coastline, a process that has been accelerated by canals dredged through the wetlands, mostly for use by the oil and gas industry.
Scientists say it won’t be possible to make New Orleans and coastal Louisiana disaster-proof. Nor will they speculate whether fully restored barrier islands and healthy buffer of marshland could have saved New Orleans from disastrous breaches in its levees.
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