re: When will it be time to abandon Grand Isle, Lafitte, lower Plaquemines, etc?

Grand Isle is slowly going the way of every other island in Louisiana. The water continues to open up behind the island which will cause the damage to continue to get worse. Read up on Last Island to see what the end results will be. If the fine residents of Grand Isle and camp owners want to flip the bill for a 10 ft sea wall around the island more power to them. It’s probably more realistic to raise your camp and fill in the holes after each storm.

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In about 10 years this question will be when will it be time to abandon South Louisiana, a land which will continue sinking into the sea unless a broke America squanders billions to save it through ever complex levees and sediment diversion projects?

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That started right after Katrina with "scientists" who didn't seem to understand subsidence ("wHy dId tHeY bUiLd nEw OrLeAnZ uNdEr SeA lEvElz!?!?!/!1111"), quieted down a little for a few years, then appeared again in 2016 with all the flooding issues.

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Louisiana has dredged and rebuilt way more land than Dubai ever has.

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I think the inference was that Dubai only had to do it once.

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When will the people down there finally agree that, “OK, it’s time to go.”

We have already pumped billions (with a B) over 40 years in the form of insurance payouts, coastal restoration, levees, rebuilding of electric and water infrastructure, with near zero return on investment. How long can we continue to spend like this for the sake of a few thousand people who choose against logic to live there?

I know this is a delicate issue to many and I’m not flaming. But y’all it is NEVER GONNA GET BETTER. It is only going to get worse as the land continues to sink and the ocean continues to rise.

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The easy fix is to completely isolate those areas with tremendous 360 degree protection levees. Install elevated highways to get there and then blow the western protection levee south of Braithwaite all the way down the river.

All the Mississippi to flood the entire Barataria flood plain. Which has been starved of new sediment for 100+ years.

Yesterday.

A lot of politicians and leaders have a broken window view of economic development. It is more lucrative to keep getting federal dollars to keep fixing things than it is to not have had to fix them in the first place.

The money that will pour into programs for the area to rebuild is just too juicy.

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I think the inference was that Dubai only had to do it once.

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They have unlimited sand right off the coast. We don’t. When you pull up your anchor fishing in LA, what is it? Black goopy muck, not beach sand. We are running out of sand and have practically dredged all the nearshore beach sand in the gulf from Caminada east to Red Pass. It’s why for Elmers and Caminada the state had to go 30 miles away to ship shoal and why for Pelican and Scofield they had to lump it 15+ miles from the Mississippi River. It’s incredibly expensive. We dont have good beach sand close to many of our beaches.

Some positives are than from looking at NOAA imagery post storm, the “good” beach sand from Ship Shoal did very well in Caminada with no breaches. The “crappy” beach sand placed this year on the east end of GI and all over West Grand Terre did terribly and is strewn about. It will be expensive just to re-pump the beach at GI regardless. I think whoever ends up in charge of that (the corps, fema, cpra, etc) should consider not just a single geotube this time, and instead more than one, with buried stone armor under the sand covering, at least for the eastern half/erosive half of Grand Isle.

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Just get ride of NFIP policies and they'll leave quickly

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I will ask this question.

How many people flood in areas that are not in a Flood Zone?

I will hang up and listen.

Because people flood everywhere it is just not along the coast.

What if another hurricane hits down there in the next 3 years? The island is super vulnerable right now, and won’t need a 4 or 5 to do some damage. A strong 2 will hurt the island pretty bad

I'm a geologist. One thing about barrier islands is they change. Especially in hurricanes. And all those ridges you see as you drive to Grand Isle or Pecan Island or Johnson's Bayou all used to be beaches. The ground sinks in coastal Louisiana. That's why you find shallow water sediment a mile deep in a borehole.