Save Louisiana: How we can protect the coast from erosion and help slow down hurricanes
MONTEGUT, La. (BRPROUD) — Louisiana’s coast is washing away, and that change is allowing some storms that blow in from the Gulf to have a larger impact. Groups are using natural methods, like recycled oyster shells, to protect the marshland that is still there.
It’s part of a bigger plan to protect communities.
The long road south ends in bayou country where generations of people that rely on the marshes continue to see them washed away.
“When you get out here, you can see it and you can see why it’s so important,” said Fiona Lightbody, with the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana.
Hurricanes and tropical storms can feed off of open waters — like Hurricane Ida did, causing it to remain a Category 4 farther inland than expected.
“The more wetland areas you have, the greater the storm surge can be knocked back. The storm surge comes right in over open water and can push further and further inland with greater force,” said John White, Associate Dean of Research at Louisiana State University’s Department of Oceanography & Coastal Sciences
Research shows a football field of land is washed away every 100 minutes, or an area the size of Lafayette is stripped off like a ribbon from the coast every couple of years.
Interactive map shows parts of Louisiana, US cities that could be underwater in 2050
“We’ve got sea level coming up everywhere in the world, but we’re actually sinking at a greater rate. So we have the sea level rise, that difference today here in Louisiana, that everyone else is going to have in about 50 years,” White said.
There are efforts to slow down the land loss and protect the communities along the coast. Alongside the Pointe au Chien tribe, the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana has been identifying areas that need protecting by taking oyster shells off New Orleans restaurant tables and making them into reefs.
About 30 Crescent City restaurants partner with CRCL. Over the last 10 years, they have recycled more than 14 million pounds of oyster shells and protected over 8,000 feet of shoreline on the state’s coast.
Once the shells are dried out and packed up, they are lined around the marsh in areas identified by the tribe that they want to focus on for restoration.
The first reef was built in 2019 in southern Lafourche and Terrebonne parishes. Following Ida and daily boat waves, it fared better than the unprotected areas.
“There was one, two feet like difference between where the reef is and the unprotected marsh edge,” Lightbody said.
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So why shells rather than a big levee like in New Orleans? LSU researchers say it all comes down to cost and protecting the way of life in the southernmost parishes with a mix of natural and man-made protections.
“If we did that, we wouldn’t have any of the interaction of the wetlands with the coastal waters that would affect our fisheries, that would affect our system substantially,” White said.
Some projects meant to help will also impact local fishermen such as the Mid Barataria sediment diversion project. But groups like CRCL say the salt water of the Gulf is creeping into the bayous and something needs to be done.
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Coastal Meteorology Professor Paul Miller said when explaining the weight of the situation on the coast, it can be hard to attribute a certain amount of erosion to any one storm like Ida — but over time it’s evident it’s happening.
“You have to kind of consider the net effects of wetland erosion over the scale of decades or even centuries for that to become a really appreciable effect, which makes it very easy in any given budget cycle to say, ‘oh, we’ll worry about it later,’” Miller said.
Those living along the coast in Louisiana can’t worry about it later. With storms like Hurricane Ida that barreled into the vulnerable marshland, they are working one shell at a time to make change.
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