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[rapier]

Read these observations of the Louisiana coastline from 2002. This is the single biggest cause of the tragedy.

September 2002

Sinking into the Sea

by Daniel Zwerdling

Right now, an entire region of the United States is crumbling and sinking into the sea. Scientists say it's causing one of the worst and least-publicized environmental disasters in America's history. As Daniel Zwerdling reports for NPR News and American Radio Works, there's a moral to this story: when humans try to outwit nature, it can strike back with a vengeance.

The Greatest Wetlands on Earth
It's hard to sense how vast this problem is, until you see it from the air. A group of government officials has just buckled up their life jackets, because they're going to see the crisis first-hand.

One official has just flown in from the Pentagon, a few come from the state capital of Louisiana. And now this bright yellow helicopter lifts off the banks of the Mississippi River, and it heads toward a landscape that's vanishing. A biologist named Bill Good is guiding this inspection; he works with the state's department of natural resources. He says every couple of years, Louisiana loses a chunk of land that's bigger than Manhattan.

"And," Good notes, "if a foreign country came in and took that much of our real estate every year, that would be grounds for war."

The helicopter heads south along the muddy Mississippi. We skirt the skyline of New Orleans. We buzz over oil refineries and shipyards and freighters loaded with grain. Suddenly, civilization seems to come to an end.

We're flying over Louisiana's wetlands. Coastal wetlands are lands that gets flooded by tides. They're bursting with life, like rainforests , and these are some of the greatest wetlands on Earth. They sprawl 300 miles along the Gulf of Mexico, and they go up to 50 miles inland. They're the heart of the Mississippi Delta; and this astonishing landscape is vanishing. Good says if we'd taken this helicopter trip 50 years ago, it would have looked like the Great Plains.

"Exactly. It would look just like the prairies in the Midwest," says Good. "They were very solid, vast expanses of grass, of beautiful area, of verdant green from horizon to horizon."

A Tragedy of Immense Proportions
But now, we're looking at a ragged patchwork. There are thousands of streams and lakes and canals: they're eating away at the grasslands like cancer.

Bill Good nods his head toward the window, "Look down there, see those fishing boats in that bay?" When he flew over this spot the first time, back in the 1980s, that "bay" was solid ground. Satellite images show that every day, a chunk of land the size of a football field crumbles and turns into water.

"That scale is monumental and the significance is really hard to put into words," says Good.

That's why the government officials are inspecting the coast from the helicopter on this day, They say if the country doesn't do something dramatic to save this region, it could hurt the American economy. Bill Good says it would cripple the state.

"It's very hard to get your mind wrapped around how large and important and productive and unique all of this is," says Good. "To see it simply dying is a tragedy. A tragedy of immense proportions."

It took nature thousands of years to create these wetlands. If you want to understand how Americans are destroying them, it helps to get back on Earth.

A hugely successful disaster
Oliver Houck runs the environment program at Tulane University's Law School, and on a recent evening, he leads the way to one of the spots that helped trigger the wetlands crisis in the first place.

"Well, we're on the banks of the Mississippi River and these are the levees we're about to cross ... .it's a monster system."

To get there, we park near some old wooden houses next to the railroad tracks in New Orleans, and we scramble up the grassy embankment that looks over the river.

"The banks here are about 20 feet high," explains Houck, "and when we cross the banks, you'll see on the other side [that] if these levees were not here, that water would be at about eaves' level across the houses behind us."

I always wondered what "levees" meant. A levee is a wall. A levee is a wall to keep the river out of your living room.

Houck says before people built these walls, the giant Mississippi helped build America. Every day, the river and its tributaries washed millions of pounds of soil from all over the country down to the Gulf of Mexico.

"You can imagine what it would take in dump trucks to bring half a million tons of silt to south Louisiana," says Houck. "Well, it would take about two hundred thousand, two-and-half ton dump trucks every day, driving from Minnesota, from Rapid City, from Pittsburgh, from Denver. And in so doing, it brings down these enormous, enormous loads of earth to the mouth of the Mississippi."

Every year or so, Houck says, it would rain so much that the river would gush out of its banks, and all that mud and goo would spread out along the coast.

"And that's what built south Louisiana," Houck says. "The Mississippi built five million acres of land. A huge amount of land was wetland."

But when French settlers showed up in the 1700s, they tried to stop the Mississippi from flooding: they started building these walls. Eventually, the U.S. Army took over the job, and every time they thought they'd conquered nature, the river proved them wrong. So the army built more walls and they built them higher, they've built two thousand miles of levees as of today along the Mississippi River and its branches. And Houck says, the army has finally won the war—they've tamed the Mississippi.



"And so," describes Houck, "the project was—from an engineering point of view— brilliant, brilliant. It was hugely successful. From an environmental standpoint, it was a disaster."

Dying Wetlands

Now scientists like Denise Reed are trying to figure out how that disaster is changing the state.

"Okay, let's get it started," says Reed, "We'll start the engine. OK, we're gonna take that line off first—off last."

We've just left the dock in a scruffy town called Cocodrie, right in the heart of the wetlands. Reed moved here from England, so she could study them, for the University of New Orleans. She steers the boat down a bayou—that's the Cajun word for a slow stream— and it looks like we're floating through fields of grass. White pelicans swoop over our heads, and we pass fishing boats draped in nets.

"This marsh that we're gonna look at now," explains Reed. "It's pretty typical of many, many acres, thousands of acres of marsh in southern Louisiana. It's really hanging on the edge."

Reed says here's one reason why: After the Mississippi River built these wetlands, thousands of years ago, this whole region began to subside. And it is still is: all that rich heavy soil that the river used to dump here keeps compressing under its own weight. But that was never a problem in the old days, because the river would keep flooding and dumping more soil on the wetlands, and that would build them right back up.

"So," continues Reed, "when we built the levees along the Mississippi River, that cut off a supply of fresh water and sediment to these marshes that they would have gotten every three to five years—when a big flood came down the river. And so what that means is that the land is sinking."

The wetlands are literally sinking into the sea: the Gulf of Mexico is essentially drowning them. The moment we get out of the boat, we can feel that this wetland is dying.

Reed says if this were a healthy marsh, we'd be able to walk through the grasses like it was a hayfield. But every time we take a step, we sink up to our calves in water.

"I don't know how many times you fell in over your knees, but I fell in several times. It's full of holes," describes Reed.

Now, if I were just here on my own, sloshing around in this water that we keep falling in, I'd think, "Oh, marsh! That's what it's supposed to be, land and water together. So why is this a sign that this marsh is dying?"

"Well, " explains Reed, "what it tells us is that there's not much holding it together, apart from the plant roots. There's nothing very firm down there. It's not anchored very well.

"That's bad! And of course we're standing here, right next to a pond. This is not a very big one. When you fly over Louisiana, you can see that there are myriads of ponds this size, and very, very much bigger. But what seems to have happened here is that the plants that were there have said, 'I give up.' The plants die, and when plants die, there's nothing to hold it together, and what you end up with is a pond like this. And that's land loss! This is what coastal land loss is in Louisiana. Something that's a marsh with grass—turning to open water.

And Reed says, there's another reason these wetlands are sick. She says look back at that waterway we just came down, to get into this marsh—notice how straight it is? Nature didn't build lines like that— the energy industry did. In the middle of the 1900s, companies like Shell and Texaco found huge amounts of energy below the wetlands.

"This is the kind of canal that the companies had to dredge through the marsh to actually drill holes to extract oil and gas," says Reed. "There are thousands and thousands and thousands of these across coastal Louisiana."

In fact, when you wind through the wetlands in a boat, you start to think, 'This is wilderness'—the landscape is hauntingly beautiful. Then, suddenly, there's a cluster of drilling rigs like a grove of metal trees. That's made energy the biggest industry in Louisiana, but the wetlands are dying much faster where these canals have carved them up.

"This marsh cannot survive in this state much longer. It's like the edge of a blanket starting to fray. Once it starts, it goes very rapidly," warns Reed.

Satellite photos suggest that if the wetlands keep disappearing, the entire nation could be affected. Americans eat more shrimp and crabs and other seafood from Louisiana than from any state except Alaska; the creatures spend part of their lives in these wetlands. You buy more oil and gas from Louisiana and the Gulf of Mexico than from almost any other state—and a lot of that fuel flows through pipelines under these wetlands. So, researchers say that as the wetlands vanish, some kinds of seafood might disappear, and you'll have to pay more money to drive your car and heat your home.

Sinking Louisiana towns
Here in Louisiana, people's lives are already changing.

In the cemetery, in the town of Leeville, Rick Eddy runs the bait and tackle shop. He's taking us out on his boat to show us where the townspeople are buried, because this is the only way you can see it.

"OK, see over here—here's one of the headstones sticking up out of the water," points out Eddy. "The tides a little high right now, but usually you can see anywhere from 25 to 30 headstones.

"It's definitely all under water," continues Eddy. "The cemetery's all under water. It's eroded right away. I've been in this area for 15 years. When I first came into this area, there was all land there. It's very heartbreaking. And to have something like this come along—and erosion. Some of the headstones are all busted up. The mausoleums, it's just a pile of rubble really. Kinda hard to put it in words. "

http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/wetlands/sink_print.html

[ontheway]

Thank you, Rapier. This is quite informative. Many levees should be torn down. Not restored or replaced. The governmental mistake was NOT failure to fund levees. The governmental mistake was in subsidizing a losing battle with nature, encouraging development in sensitive areas, and bailing out people who foolishly build in these coastal zones. The government should do NOTHING. Socialism kills. TANSTAAFL.

[khyber]

otw..what a strange thing to say.
the government's mistake was subsidizing a losing battle with nature?
Yes, nature always wins. Just sometimes she wins quickly.

The government should do nothing? Like absolutely nothign?
I dunno. I think that ripping up the levees is all fine and good. Nothing to lose there but billions and billions (if not trillions) of dollars. To say nothing of the cost of moving a city.
I mean, i'm all for it..... and i suppose if there were a government fiscall irresponsible to do it, it would be bush's fellers.
But the simple fact here is that "Socialism kills" has little to nothing to do with with the levees.
Don't forget "capitalistic forces" undoubtedly drove the wetlands to be in the position it is today (what with the oil underneath, the canal system neceesary, to say nothing of all the refineries located aroudn there).
but there ain't much point in bringing that in...useless i see

[jinglejangle]

This article leaves out that US topsoil is disappearing into the ocean from all over the mississippi valley. I wonder if one day our country won't be as arid as Afganistan.

[rapier]

there is some sort of restoration project being attempted involving piping sludge and dumping it along the coast.
far more effective to start recreating the original pattern of waterways, (where possible) i think. i mean, so much silt is just emptying into the gulf now whereas it used to be distributed over a vast area, shoring up the coast.

Louisiana coast no longer as nature intended
By Oren Dorell and Tom Kenworthy, USA TODAY 2 OCt 2005

CHAUVIN, La. — To Lucious Thibodeaux, it's clear why the brackish water remains in his house days after Hurricane Rita passed through Terrebonne Parish southwest of New Orleans.

Lucious Thibodeaux lives in coastal Chauvin, La., which flooded during Hurricane Rita last month. "There's nothing to stop the waves," says Thibodeaux, 61, a former oil field worker. "The Gulf is in our backyards."

It wasn't always so.

Historically, the Louisiana coast enjoyed a measure of protection from hurricanes. Barrier islands and extensive marshes and wetlands dotted with trees and grass served as buffers, absorbing some of the power of storm surges coming in from the Gulf of Mexico.

During the past century, coastal Louisiana has lost much of that natural storm shield.

In the Mississippi Delta region south of New Orleans, coastal wetlands were once regularly replenished with sediment brought down from the Midwest and deposited during Mississippi River flooding. Now, the levees and navigation channels built to tame the Mississippi funnel that sediment deep into the Gulf.

In southwest Louisiana, canals, levees and roads built to aid rice farms and transportation now interrupt the natural "sheet flow" of water toward the Gulf. The features trap sediment needed to sustain marshes, and with less fresh water flowing south, saltwater intrudes and kills vegetation.

Louisiana "really has severe coastal erosion problems," says Gregory Stone of Louisiana State University's Coastal Studies Institute. "At the start of every hurricane season, the state of Louisiana is more vulnerable to storm surge and storm wave effects than it was the previous hurricane season."
Over the course of his lifetime, Thibodeaux — the fourth generation of his family to ply the surrounding bayous and bays for shrimp and fish — has witnessed those changes. He grew up in nearby Cocodrie, and the only family vehicles were boats.

The lakes he used to frequent as a boy were so hard to reach that people used a narrow, flat-bottomed boat common to Cajun country, called a pirogue. With the inland marshes and swamps dying off, the lakes now are mostly open water.

"You can launch your boat and go straight there," Thibodeaux says. "I've seen floods before, but this is about the worst," he says.

"The storm surge that we're seeing is not part of our history," says Kerry St. Pé, director of the Barataria Terrebonne National Estuary Program, a state-federal conservation effort. The flooding caused by Hurricane Rita is "a perfect example of surge that would not have been near as bad with a healthy system of wetlands," St. Pé says.

Communities in this area sit on ridges of land deposited by Mississippi River flooding over thousands of years. Between the ridges are low-lying marshes and swamps, home to shrimp, crab, fish, reptiles and birds.

For generations, people survived largely on the bounty of the wetlands and the sea.

Local restaurant menus reflect the riches. Flanagan's, the most upscale restaurant in Thibodaux, La., features crawfish, shrimp, catfish, duck and frog legs. Boudreaux's, a lunch spot, offers oysters — raw or fried. Commercial shrimp vessels and small recreational boats line the bayous. Fishing boats and skiffs sit in almost every yard or driveway.

Until about 30 years ago, the people of southern Louisiana were among the last subculture in the USA to live completely off the land, fur trapping in hunting camps in winter and shrimping, oystering and fishing in the spring, summer and fall, says Christopher Hallowell, professor of business journalism at Baruch College in New York, who wrote People of the Bayou: Cajun Life in Lost America.

That changed as the landscape did. "The marsh has almost become a memory to these people," Hallowell says. "They turn to it on weekends, (and) at alligator (hunting) season. It's become a source of recreation and a cottage industry."

And Rita may have accelerated the change.

Rita knocked out at least a half-dozen levees in southwest Louisiana, including one that separates Wonder Lake from the village of Montegut. On one side of the levee are homes and a forest of cypress and palmetto trees. On the other is open water, a stand of dead cypress trees and some broken patches of marsh grass.

"It was fresh water, now it's become brackish and we've lost wetlands because we've allowed saltwater to intrude," St. Pé says. Pointing to brown leaves on trees in the forest, he says, "That levee breach allowed saltwater in. These trees immediately show stress."

During the past half-century, Louisiana has lost an average of 34 square miles of land a year, mostly coastal marshes and wetlands, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

From 1932 to 2000, an area about the size of Delaware has simply disappeared. During the 1990s, the state's loss of coastal wetlands accounted for about 90% of the total loss nationally.

About 20% of those losses have occurred in the southwestern region of Louisiana hit by Rita, and about 80% in the Mississippi Delta region hit by Hurricane Katrina a month ago, according to Robert Twilley, an oceanography professor at Louisiana State University.

"An easy way for the public to grasp it is we lose a football field every 15 to 30 minutes," says LSU's Stone.

Many things contributed to the loss of wetlands, St. Pé says, including the dredging of navigation canals, oil and gas exploration and the levee system. The Barataria Terrebonne National Estuary Program is proposing an expensive fix.

It suggests building wetlands through a pipeline system to bring in sediment dredged from the Mississippi River. The program is testing which plants grow best on this type of land in hopes of attracting sea life and birds.

Without such intervention, says Donald Adams, a construction foreman working on repairing the levee at Wonder Lake, "lower Terrebonne Parish won't be here."

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2005-10-02-wetlands-lost_x.htm

[khyber]

[Kuros]

Good thread, Rapier. Have you ever decided on making your commitment to the environment a career? I think you should consider doing so at least.

[rapier]

[igotthisguitar]

Engineers: 1985 Test Predicted Levee Break
By JANET McCONNAUGHEY, Associated Press Writer
Mon Mar 13, 10:50 PM ET

NEW ORLEANS - Scientists working on an independent study of a floodwall that collapsed during Hurricane Katrina said Monday that a government test 21 years ago predicted the wall could fail.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' built a levee and floodwall system to test a design similar to the 17th Street Canal in 1985, which "indicated that failure was imminent," according to a statement from Raymond B. Seed and Robert G. Bea, in charge of the National Science Foundation's Independent Levee Investigation Team.

"Not only did they have that in their repertoire of information, they failed to use it, as best we can tell," Seed said in a telephone interview from the University of California, Berkeley.

Corps spokesman Wayne Stroupe said his agency knew about the 1985 test, and that he would forward the scientists' statement to a Corps official for a response.

http://levees.notlong.com

[dulouz]

Wow - a leaked formed in a wall that holds back trillions of tonnes of water. Gosh, how'd that happen? We don't need an engineer to tell us that, never did. NO was way past its prime. Time to move on.

[TheUrbanMyth]

NO NO NO!!!

It's all Bush's fault!!! He tried to pass the buck!!!


Seriously though, good thread Mr. Rapier, (and I don't say that about your threads too often.)

N.O. was a disaster waiting to happen. And ever since the locals went to court to shut down repair efforts because they were making too much noise, the countdown was going on.

[Hollywoodaction]

Music fans have known about this for years.

New Orleans is sinking and I don't want to swim

[thepeel]

Here is a libertarian take on the issue.

http://thecaseforsmallgovernment.blogspot.com/2006/03/do-not-rebuild-levees.html

[rapier]

[quote="BJWD"]Here is a libertarian take on the issue.

http://thecaseforsmallgovernment.blogspot.com/2006/03/do-not-rebuild-levees.html

[Hater Depot]

John McPhee's The Control of Nature has a good chapter about the Mississippi delta being a disaster of Biblical proportions just waiting to happen.