Gov. Landry has pulled the plug on Louisiana’s biggest coastal project, Tulane expert says

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NEW ORLEANS (WVUE) - A Tulane University environmental law expert said he believes Governor Jeff Landry has effectively killed Louisiana’s largest coastal project as envisioned.

“What the governor did, basically, was pull the plug on the Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion,” said Mark Davis, a senior research fellow and founding director of the Tulane Institute on Water Resources Law and Policy.

Landry told a Senate committee in Baton Rouge last Thursday that the $3.1 billion diversion would destroy Louisiana’s culture.

In doing so, Landry sided with many commercial fishermen and other critics, who argue that 75,000 cubic feet per second of Mississippi River water would devastate the Barataria Basin, marine life and those who make their livings fishing these waters.

Computer models show the diversion on the Plaquemines Parish West Bank would create 21 square miles of land over 50 years.

Landry has talked of compromise, a theoretically smaller project without the cost and the negative effects.

However, the governor and his aides on the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority have provided few details of their conversations with Plaquemines Parish officials, citing lawsuits and non-disclosure agreements.

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