How Does the Coastal Master Plan Impact Me?
← Older postsHow Does the Coastal Master Plan Impact Me?
Earlier this month, the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority released its draft 2023 Coastal Master Plan (CMP). This plan serves as a guide for Louisiana’s coastal restoration and risk reduction efforts and is released every 6 years. The plan is the end product of thousands of hours of engineering, research and modeling to determine how to best spend Louisiana’s resources over the next 50 years in the face of climate change, sea level rise and land loss. At 100 …
An Ever-changing River: Examining Where Land Meets Water
Based in New Orleans, Virginia Hanusik is a visual artist whose projects explore the relationship between landscape, culture and the built environment. Through her photography, she manages to beautifully capture the visual narrative of climate change on the Mississippi River and the surrounding areas. Her work has been featured internationally across major publications like The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and National Geographic, to name a few. Her dedication to telling the story of the delta continued last year in her …
Getting the Recipe Right: How Adaptive Management Can Help Optimize Diversions
As the weather begins to cool down in Louisiana, there is no better time to talk about everyone’s favorite dish: a nice warm bowl of gumbo. Whether your favorite is seafood or chicken and sausage, several steps go into perfecting a gumbo recipe. “Coastal restoration” might not immediately come to mind when you think about a perfect gumbo. But in reality, perfecting the operation of Louisiana’s sediment diversions is a lot like getting a classic gumbo recipe tried, true, and …
The Mississippi River is Our Greatest Force for Building Land
Skip to a section 1. The River in Action. Neptune Pass Is Building Land 2. Diversions Build Land. Period. 3. While not a Sediment Diversion, the Caernarvon Freshwater Diversion Builds Land 4. Wetlands Need Sediment to Survive 5. Roots + Sediment = Stronger Soils, More Resilient Marshes 6. There is more to Sediment than Sand 7. Diversions are Field-Tested and Scientifically Solid 8. The Mid Barataria Sediment Diversion is a Coastal Restoration Project, Not MRGO 9. Diversions + Nutrients = …
Battered by Recent Hurricanes, Southwest Louisiana Benefits from New Coastal Restoration Projects
This is the third blog in a series focused on coastal restoration projects advancing across Louisiana’s coast. You can read the Southeast blog here, and the Central Coast blog here. In August of 2020, Hurricane Laura made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane in Cameron, Louisiana, located along the state’s southwest coast. Less than 45 days later, Hurricane Delta made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane just east of Cameron in Creole, Louisiana. These storms devastated the people and communities …
Coastal Restoration is More Important Than Ever for Communities Across Louisiana’s Central Coast
This is the second blog in a series focused on coastal restoration projects advancing across Louisiana’s coast. You can read the Southeast blog here, and the Southwest Coast blog here. As communities across Louisiana continue to recover from the devastation of the last two hurricane seasons, it’s difficult to think that another hurricane season is about to begin. In 2020, five storms made landfall in Louisiana – the most ever – with Hurricanes Laura and Delta devastating the southwest portion …
With No Time to Lose, Louisiana Is Constructing More Coastal Restoration and Protection Projects Than Ever
This is the first blog in a series focused on coastal restoration projects advancing across Louisiana’s coast. You can read the Southwest blog here, and the Central Coast blog here. When the first Louisiana Coastal Master Plan was released in 2007, just two years after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, we laid out massive restoration needs with no time to lose. Overwhelming? Yes. Pipe Dream? No. Today, we are seeing the consistent advocacy and commitment to the Louisiana coast turn big …
Project to Restore Maurepas Swamp Takes One Important Step Forward
Army Corps releases plan selecting Maurepas restoration project as mitigation for nearby levee construction. Overview of Maurepas Swamp As one of the largest forested wetlands in the nation, Maurepas Swamp provides important ecological and socioeconomic benefits to southeast Louisiana. The swamp not only improves water quality and habitat for many species of conservation importance, but also increases resilience against storms for coastal communities from the Greater New Orleans region to the River Parishes and up into Greater Baton Rouge. However, …
Announcing Simone Maloz as Restore the Mississippi River Delta’s Campaign Director
These last few months have made it abundantly clear that Louisiana needs its coast now more than ever. Since Hurricanes Katrina and Rita devastated our state more than 15 years ago, there has been considerable progress to implement the Coastal Master Plan, resulting in increased flood protection for more people and businesses, restored habitat for fish and wildlife, as well as the creation of jobs and the restoration economy. However, much work remains, and the coming years will see some …
Building a More Resilient New Orleans
Katie Donahue – City of NOLA, Office of Resilience and Sustainability With Ida recovery ongoing, we are all intensely aware that New Orleans has a lot on the line when it comes to restoring coastlines and protecting communities from land loss and climate change impacts. They city’s very existence is at stake. Strategic, collaborative, and innovative solutions are essential to our continued progress. In 2018, Tulane University and the National Wildlife Federation released recommendations for the City of New Orleans’ …
Knowledge is Power: Introducing a New Guide to Coastal Restoration!
Restore the Mississippi River Delta is proud to present our “Community Guide to Coastal Restoration.” This is a quick reference guide to help you -whether you are new to coastal restoration or very familiar with it – better understand and navigate the web of entities, decision-makers, and funding sources involved in the restoration of our coast. It is available both online, and as a physical booklet. Many in Louisiana are familiar with the land loss crisis the state is facing. We often …
Virtual Meetings to Provide Information and Resources on Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion
On March 5, 2021, the Army Corps of Engineers released a Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) for the Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion for public review, triggering a 60-day comment period. The Natural Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA) Louisiana Trustee Implementation Group (LATIG) also released a draft Restoration Plan identifying how the project will help restore the ecosystem in the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. But where does my voice fit in? Coming in at over 5000 pages, consisting of 10 …
Soaring Above Louisiana’s Coast Shows How We Can Restore It
Ben Depp is a New Orleans-based landscape photographer and National Geographic Society Explorer. He has photographed many parts of Louisiana’s coast, capturing with amazing detail the beautiful and haunting details of our disappearing swamps, marshes and barrier islands. Last year, Ben was featured in the nationally-distributed documentary series “Last Call for the Bayou” in the episode, “On a Wing and a Prayer,” which detailed the urgency of the state’s land loss crisis and his unique process for documenting it. I …
Without the Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion, the Future for Louisiana’s Barataria Basin is Bleak
Louisiana’s land loss crisis is dire and will significantly worsen without investments in large-scale coastal restoration and protection projects. Since the 1930s, Louisiana has lost 2,000 square miles of coastal wetlands. Without action, the state could lose double that amount — an additional 4,000 square miles of land – in the next 50 years. This future scenario, commonly referred to as Future Without Action (FWOA), underscores why Louisiana has literally no time to lose in constructing coastal projects that can …
CWPPRA Provides Lessons for Applying Adaptive Management Across Louisiana’s Coast
Adaptive management has become an important tool for natural resource managers tasked with running complex systems in the face of growing uncertainty. It relies on a framework that continually updates management decisions based on the ongoing monitoring of data. This framework can apply to a variety of projects, including those designed to protect and restore coastal habitat. Louisiana’s massive coastal restoration efforts are a classic example of an elaborate and ever-changing landscape that calls for such an approach. For example, …