The Times-Picayune of New Orleans is printing a series of articles on the crisis facing the Mississippi delta region. Scientists estimate that the southern coastline of Louisiana will disappear in ten years. The Gulf of Mexico could reach the New Orleans suburbs in much less time than estimated in historical predictions. Science has known since 1970 of the coastal land loss. For each square mile restored by man since 1989 when serious reclamation efforts began, the Gulf has taken five. Essentially the wetlands that act as a buffer against the saltwater are collapsing due to lack of new inflows of silt and freshwater from the Mississippi River. Decades of channel digging and levee building have totally disrupted the natural balance of the wetlands ecosystem. Besides the loss of the irreplaceable wildlife and habitat, studies show that destruction of the wetlands protecting industrial infrastructure such as oil and gas installations puts $103 billion worth of assets at risk. Levees built to withstand occasional storm surges will be continuously standing in water. Congress recently gave Louisiana a permanent 37.5% share of offshore petroleum revenue for coast restoration. But that money does not arrive until 2017. The next ten years are critical, and there is not enough money to fund projects big enough to ameliorate the problem.The Barataria Basin to the south of New Orleans has been neglected for thirty years. It is the weak link in New Orlean's storm surge protection. To the north, surges can be directed into the basin of Lake Pontchartrain. But the marshes, swamps, and barrier islands of Barataria acted as a sponge for Gulf waters pushed north by storms prior to 1940. Land in the basin is disappearing so fast chart makers cannot make changes fast enough. Whole villages have disappeared. There was a time in the 1980s when man might have been able to get ahead of the curve of destruction, but now it may be a case of too little, too late.
Never one to allow scientific data to inform his policy, the Charlatan is moving $1.3 billion in federal funds in his fiscal 2008 budget away from fortifying levees to plug funding gaps in other hurricane protection projects. Apparent this is an attempt to avoid asking Congress for more money. If the predictions of a twenty foot increase in sea levels due to melting ice cap are correct, New Orleans will be submerged within a hundred years. Only a public works project on the scale of the Netherlands' Nord Zee dikes has a chance of saving the city from future abandonment. But with our federal government spending $623 billion on the war machine, running record deficits, and still cutting taxes, financing such a massive construction program is problematic.