Billion Dollar Earthworks Underway to Rebuild Louisiana’s Barataria Basin

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers believes a new project will create 21 square miles of land in the Barataria Basin by 2070 with the price tag coming at about $3 Billion to the American taxpayer or about $108/sq. feet. It helps to think about this less as a valiant struggle against ‘climate change’ and more as a somewhat dubious real-estate investment.

According to The Associated Press, new enormous gates will be installed into a portion of the flood protection levee in the region Southeast of New Orleans, diverting some of the Mississippi River and it’s thick sediment to a new channel that will eventually lead it to build up in the Bataria Basin.

The project, known as the “Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion project” works as advertised it will gradually restore the sedimentary land washed away from the Bataria Basin which has been eroded away by floods and hurricanes over the decades.

Governor John Bel Edwards is set to preside over a groundbreaking at the Plaquemines Parish Thursday.

Chair of Louisiana’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, Bren Haase said Tuesday “Without question, we are confident that this project will build land within the Barataria Basin.” He reportedly estimated that the diversion could build a range from 20 to 40 square miles of land in the next 30-50 years. However, the Corps of Engineers gave the more conservative 21 sq. mi. estimate bearing in mind subsidence and projected sea-level increases associated with ‘climate change’ theories that have yet to be realized.

In a statement, according to AP the Corps said

“As land loss accelerates due to sea-level rise and subsidence, more of the remaining wetland area would be attributed to diversion operations.”

However, coastal experts cited by the AP stated that southern Louisiana was built up by sediments deposited by the Mississippi as the track of the river naturally wandered across the delta over thousands of years.

It was when man through development and earthworks fixed the course of the river in place with levees, dams, and gates that this natural, gradual sedimentation was disrupted. Only now do we properly understand the hydrological history of the region and can take steps to reverse the damage. It’s less about ‘climate change’ or ‘rising sea levels’ and more about three-hundred years of mankind not understanding how hydrology and geology work.

Opposition groups stress that the Corps of Engineers even noted in its report that “introducing non-salty river water into coastal areas where aquatic animals thrive in salty or brackish water. The changes will likely kill bottlenose dolphins and have varying effects on fish and sea turtles. Fishermen have long opposed the project because of its expected effects on shrimp and oysters as well,” according to the AP.

Kerri Callais of the Save Louisiana Coalition favors alternative coast-building efforts that are more familiar, such as building up barrier islands and piping sediment into affected areas. “These are projects that we know will build land, will not take decades, and will not take the livelihoods, culture, and heritage of our citizens away,” she explained.

Once you take the politics out of it, the considerations here are simple, and it comes down to the return on investment. Your government, as the government of the Netherlands has for decades, is using your tax dollars in the billions to reclaim land from the water. Land that the state will likely own as part of the wetlands. There are net positives, like flood control, and net negatives like the impact on wildlife. The real consideration has to be what is best for the people of Louisiana, not what looks best for the political optics.