Louisiana canceled 3 billion US dollars of coastal restoration project

New Orleans (AP) – Louisiana canceled a repair of 3 billion US dollars of the disappeared golf coast on Thursday 2010 Deepwater Horizon Oilpest Settlement, scraps what conservationists described an urgent reaction to climate change, but governor Jeff Landry considered a threat to the life of the state.

Despite years of studies and checks, the project at the center of the coastal protection plans in Louisiana was increasingly at risk after Landry, a Republican, took office last year. Its collapse means that the state could lose more than 1.5 billion US dollars at uneasy funds and may even have to repay the 618 million US dollar that it has already started to set up.

The Louisiana Trustee Implementation Group, a mixture of federal authorities that monitor the settlement funds, said that “unused project funds for future activities will be available to restore Deepwater Horizon”, but would require review and approval.

A plan for reconstruction of disappearing land

The sediment diversion project in the middle of the barataria aimed to rebuild 32 kilometers of land over a period of 50 years in Southeast Louisiana over a period of 50 years in order to combat the increase and erosion of the sea level on the golf coast. If the construction was designed last year due to lawsuits, Warned trustee that the state would have to return the hundreds of millions of dollars that it had already spent if the project is not progressing.

Former Louisiana Rep. Garret Graves, a Republican who once headed the state's coastal restoration agency, said that killing the project was a “not rooted in science”.

“It will lead to one of the biggest setbacks for our coast and the protection of our communities for decades,” said Graves. “I don't know which chiropractor or the Palm reader you received, but confusing that someone thought that this was a good idea.”

Project providers emphasized that it would have delivered a data -controlled, large -scale solution to reduce the worst effects of one eroding coast In a state in which a soccer field has disappeared every 100 minutes and more than 2,000 square miles (5,180 square kilometers) in the last century US Geological Survey.

The project, which had broken the ground in 2023, would have diverted sediment-loaded water from the Mississippi river to restore wetlands, which due to a number of factors, including climate change-induced sea level, and a huge river love system that suffocated the regeneration of natural rivers from sediment deposits.

“Science has neither changed nor urgently needed measures,” said Kim Reyher, managing director of the coalition, to restore the Louisiana coast. “What has changed is the political landscape.”

The Louisiana Trustee Implementation Group had found last year that “no further individual restoration project has been planned and studied in recent decades.”

A perceived threat to the culture of Louisiana

While the project had largely received non -partisan support and agreed by the democratic governor John Bel Edwards, his successor was a loud opponent. Landry went back at the increasing price and increased the concerns that the massive influx of fresh water would destroy local fishing.

Landry said the project would “Break” Louisiana's culture From shrimp and oyster harvest and compared the government effort to punish school children to speak of Cajun French.

“We have led this battle for a long time, but governor Landry is the reason why we won this fight,” said Mitch Jurisich, who presented the Louisiana Oyster Task Force and sued the state because of the environmental impact of the project, including the likelihood that thousands of bags are killed due to the tensioning of fresh water.

Landry said in a statement that the project was “no longer financially or practically sustainable”, and found that the costs have doubled since 2016.

“This output level is not sustainable,” said Landry. The project also threatens “the seafood industry in Louisiana, our coastal culture and the livelihood of our fishermen – people who have received our state for generations”.

The project of the project had more than 400 million US dollars for the weakening of the costs for local communities, including the support of the oyster industry, to build new oysters. Project advocate said that the quick loss of the coast meant that municipalities would still be driven out if the state would not take any measures to protect.

“They either move oysters or people, and there is only one answer to this question,” said Graves.

State is looking for a smaller, cheaper solution

The coastal protection and restoration authority in Louisiana, the main agency that monitors the project Federal license exposed At the beginning of this year after the state hired the work on the project.

The chairman Gordon “Gordy” Dove said that “our commitment to restore the coast did not fluctuate” and that the state plans to pursue a smaller distraction nearby. At the beginning of this year, Dove informed the legislators that the state could save at least $ 1 billion with another plan to direct river water with a rate of 5 to 30 times less than the 75,000 cubic feet of the mid-Barataria project per second.

Nature conservation groups were deleted when the plans were changed. The termination of the MID Barataria project was “a complete task of the scientifically driven decision-making and public transparency”, which restores the Mississippi Delta, a coalition of environmental groups, said in a statement and added that the state “throw away” money to protect its coastal dwellers and its economy.

The coalition states that alternative measures that were proposed by the state, such as the redirection on a smaller scale or the reconstruction of land through drainage, were not sufficient to use land loss sensibly, and did not experience the same level of scientific review as the mid-Barataria project.

“A Stopgap project without data is not a solution,” said the coalition. “We need distraction designs that are supported by science – not by politics.”

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Brook is a member of the Corps for the “Associated Press/Report” initiative for America Statehouse News. Report for America is a non -profit National Service program that journalists report in local news editorial offices about the undercovered topics.