As Louisiana Melts And Sinks; Latest Coastal Protection Plan Best-Case Scenario 2012 Worst-Case

[hatrack]

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Faced with a multipronged assault of environmental changes combining to wash away the state’s coastline at an unprecedented rate, state officials and local communities are absorbed in nothing less than an existential struggle against an increasingly hostile and proximate ocean.

“The very basic recognition that the coast is in deep trouble and we really need to take action, that’s very widely recognized” in the state, says Torbjörn Törnqvist, chair of the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Tulane University in New Orleans.

Indeed, the science has become hard for Louisiana officials to ignore. The state is losing about a football field of land every hour due to a combination of subsidence, or gradual sinking of land; sea level rise; and a century of human development including levee building and oil and gas exploration that has disrupted the Mississippi Delta’s natural marshland-building processes. The land loss is leaving coastal communities increasingly exposed to storms and flooding events, which are predicted to become even stronger in the future due to climate change.

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In the most recent iteration of the plan, the best-case estimate for sea level rise almost matches the worst-case estimate for sea level rise in the 2012 plan. It also describes as many as 200 projects in development – including levee construction, barrier island restoration, and diversion of freshwater sediment to gradually rebuild eroding marshland. But if anything, all the activity has only created more short-term problems and unlocked tougher debates, such as how communities should respond, where money can be scraped from, and where the money should go.

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https://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Inhabit/2017/0803/In-race-against-rising-seas-Louisiana-scrambles-to-save-dwindling-coast

[Dustlawyer]

1. Not that they will, but they should make their beloved oil companies pay for the damage they have

caused. The canals and dredging to access the oil in the swamps of LA are the major culprit, but the oil companies and their legislature, (it's the oil companies that own the legislature down here), are used to passing those costs to the citizens of LA. The citizens have always been afraid of losing those jobs to the point that they will put up with just about anything to avoid pissing off the oil companies!

[riversedge]

2. "The state-Louisianna- is losing about a football field of land every hour" WHOW!!