BP money goes to Louisiana to Punch a Hole in the Levee

 The Deepwater Horizon oil spill resulted in the covering of about 1,100 kilometers of Louisiana wetland coastline with crude oil. The heaviest damage occurred in the Barataria Basin, resulting in substantial damage and injury to natural resources and wildlife in the basin. However, there is some good that can result from that disaster. The long term erosion of the coastline had caused the fragile condition of the basin even before the spill which  served to accelerate the process.

The Barataria Basin is located immediately south and west of New Orleans, Louisiana. The Barataria Basin is bounded on the north and east by the Mississippi River from Donaldsonville to Venice, on the south by the Gulf of Mexico, and on the west by Bayou Lafourche. The Barataria Basin is an irregularly-shaped area bounded on each side by a distributary ridge formed by the present and former channels of the Mississippi River. A chain of barrier islands separates the basin from the Gulf of Mexico. Barataria Basin suffered the brunt of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill damage.

The State of Louisiana and the federal Trustees that negotiated the Deepwater Horizon Natural Resource Damages settlement allocated $4 billion, almost half of the total settlement amount, to restoring Louisiana’s wetland, coastal, and nearshore habitats. The State of Louisiana recognized the need for increasing the resiliency and sustainability of this highly productive Gulf ecosystem following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005. The Louisiana Legislature created CPRA to coordinate the local, state, and federal efforts to achieve coastal protection and restoration and combat Louisiana’s coastal land loss crisis.

After 2007, state and federal investments in the protection and restoration of Louisiana’s coast increased dramatically, but money could only be allocated slowly. These investments allowed for the implementation of improvements to Louisiana coastal communities’ hurricane protection systems, as well as shoreline protection, marsh creation, barrier island repairs, and other projects. These projects taught the engineers and planners involved in this effort many lessons and allowed them to begin to plan for and evaluate larger-scale efforts. Then the Deepwater Horizon spill happened and ultimately resulted in the $4 billion settlement to restore Louisiana’s wetlands.

Now, with the concurrence of the Army Corps of Engineers it was decided that the best method of restoration would be to cut a hole in the levee  near Myrtle Grove and install gates that would allow continual large-scale sediment diversion. Though there is the potential for some adverse impacts, the CPRA  determined that this preferred alternative will provide long-term ecosystem benefits and restoration of damaged estuary and would provide ongoing benefits to the Wetlands, Coastal, and Nearshore, and has a high likelihood of success, and would reduce future erosion. The Trustees also identified multiple potential benefits from such projects. These benefits included helping “maintain the Louisiana coastal landscape and its ability to overcome other environmental stressors by stabilizing wetland substrates; reducing coastal wetland loss rates; increasing habitat for freshwater fish, birds, and benthic communities; and reducing storm risks, thus providing protection to the essential nearby infrastructure” (DWH NRDA Trustees, 2016, page 5-25). The video below covers all the restoration going on in the Barataria Basin.