Posted on October 20, 2025
Erosion is defined as the gradual destruction or diminution of something. It’s a word we know all too well in coastal Louisiana, where damage from storms and climate change is slowly claiming the land beneath our feet.
But there is another kind of erosion that we fear is occurring. It’s the erosion of a consensus that led to big gains in coastal protection and made Louisiana a laboratory for research that was widely heralded. In recent months, it is worrying how fast this consensus — that our state must recognize coastal land loss as an urgent threat and take bold and unprecedented action to address it — is being chipped away at by all sorts of interests. Some are legitimate, others less so. But if unchallenged, before long all our hard-won progress could be washed away.
With the cancellation of the Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion in July, we urged the state not to retreat in its commitment to find ways to restore wetlands and protect the coast. We recalled the decades of Louisiana leaders across the political spectrum who fought to bring attention — and federal dollars — to combating the existential threat we face.
Now another wetlands restoration project has been canceled. The Mid-Breton Sediment Diversion, which aimed to restore land east bank of the Mississippi River near Wills Point by channeling river sediment into the Breton Basin, faced criticism over its cost and its potential effects on local fisheries.
Like the Mid-Barataria diversion, it was to be paid for primarily with money from the BP oil spill settlement. About $5 billion of those funds were set aside to restore the coast. It was a windfall that the state wasn’t expecting. And it changed what was possible in coastal protection.
Gordon Dove, chairman of the state’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, pointed to other projects under way, such as land-bridge building and other smaller diversions that could use the money from the canceled projects.
But that is no consolation. Indeed, it points to how far off track we’ve gone. The updated 50-year Coastal Master Plan, approved unanimously by the Legislature in 2023, includes these projects. It’s worth it to remember in 2007, when CPRA first issued a report called “Louisiana’s Comprehensive Master Plan for a Sustainable Coast,” part of the goal was to draw federal dollars by showing there was a blueprint on how they would be used.
Yet now it seems we are abandoning that blueprint and canceling projects based on unclear criteria and with no path forward.
That isn’t the way to build trust that money is being spent wisely. It isn’t the way to accomplish bold change. It is the way, though, to erode, dollar by dollar, project by project, the vision and legacy of those who have fought so passionately to save our coast.
