Louisiana’s $2-Billion Gamble: Flood the Land to Save the Coast

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Louisiana’s $2-Billion Gamble: Flood the Land to Save the Coast

A new engineering project would bring much needed land to eroding marshes but at a huge cost to the fishing industry

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BATON ROUGE, La.—After Hurricane Ida slammed into the Louisiana coast in August 2021, it took more than 100 lives and cost billions of dollars in damage. To some here, the storm was just one more justification for a desperate measure to preserve the coast by intentionally flooding parts of the state.

“I don't mean to be alarmist about it, but anybody who’s spent any time along our coast, whether you’re fishing, hunting or working, you’ve seen the changes to our coast. We know it's going away,” says Bren Haase, executive director of the state’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority (CPRA). “I don't think we can be successful without using the tools and the resources in the Mississippi River to help restore our coast.”

On average, between 1985 and 2010, Louisiana lost about a football field of coastline per hour, and the rate has not slowed. Stronger storms each year and sustained sea-level rise continue to eat away at its coast. Few have felt these effects more than the coastal communities. Hurricane Ida forced most of the remaining members the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw tribe to abandon their homes on Isle de Jean Charles.

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The state is now proposing a $2-billion plan, called the Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion project, that would allow the river to flood the Mid-Barataria basin at certain times throughout the year. These controlled floods could, over 50 years, regrow up to 36 square miles of land in the Barataria basin, according to Haase.

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A stone’s throw from the actual river in Baton Rouge, researchers at the Louisiana State University (LSU) Center for River Studies clamber over a 10,000-square-foot model of the real thing. They pump liquid and sandlike particles into molded channels and tributaries to test water flow. Sensors measure how fast sediment passes along the river, just like the real water gauges floating in the Mississippi.

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But not everyone is happy with this flood plan. Fishers in the area oppose the proposal because the diversion will bring freshwater into the saltwater and brackish basin, drastically reducing its salinity. They believe that key fishery species, such as brown shrimp and oysters, would die or move farther out into saltwater estuaries.

“We know we need land,” says George Ricks, a charter boat captain and founder of the Save Louisiana Coalition, a nonprofit fighting the development of the diversion. “But this is going to destroy our commercial fishing and recreational fishing communities—it’s going to bring great hardship.”

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