re: NYT has a feature up about the Louisiana coast. Pretty interesting.

quote:

---

The biggest problem is the mississippi river levee and flood protection system which prevents silt entering marshes.

Which is government’s fault.

Look at a satellite map, the Atchafalaya delta and wax lake outlet are gaining land as silt is diverted there.

Sea levels are not rising. Land is simply being lost.

---

LSU did a study a couple of years back that basically said if tore down the levees and let the river crest and flood naturally, you would still have land erosion. Why? Because the soil teansported in the river is less than the soil lost to coastal erosion.

The root cause is all of the water control dams and weirs of the TVA and Ohio river valleys trapping silt that would get transported downstream. All that soil goes elsewhere instead of the LA coast.

Tldr: tearing down the LA levees will do nothing to help coastal erosion.