Louisiana Shift Coastal Strategy After Canceling Two Major Restoration Projects

East Timbalier once seemed destined to vanish.

However, Gordon Dove, chairman of the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, wants to revive a $160 million plan to restore East Timbalier Island, which the state abandoned several years ago.

“You want your lines of your defense, your barrier islands, your land bridge, your marshes, your levee system,” said Dove, who is pushing other barrier island projects in the name of hurricane protection.

The push comes as the Landry administration shifts the state’s coastal protection priorities. This year, CPRA canceled the two largest coastal projects: the Mid-Barataria and Mid-Breton Sediment Diversion Projects, planned on both banks of the Mississippi River downriver from New Orleans.

On the west bank, the state had already spent about $500 million on Mid-Barataria, which would have channeled up to 75,000 cubic feet of river water and sediment into the bay.

The project aimed to mimic the river’s land-building powers by feeding muddy water into sediment-starved bays. Designers said it would build 21 square miles of land over 50 years.

Gov. Jeff Landry criticized the project’s $3 billion cost estimate, which roughly doubled from a decade ago. Critics argued channeling half a million gallons of Mississippi River water per second into the bay would devastate commercial fisheries and marine life, including Barataria’s bottlenose dolphin population.

“That was an experiment,” Dove said. “No one likes to use the word experiment, but an experiment is something that’s never been built before. Islands have been restored with rocks before. We’re not experimenting.”

State Rep. Jerome Zeringue, who serves on the CPRA board, complained the state pulled the plug on the east bank diversion without notifying board members.

“The whole delta that we’re on, this whole platform, was built from the river,” Zeringue said. “Essentially, the river diversion itself creating this land mass. Unless we can utilize that process, it’s going to be difficult to build and sustain land.”

Supporters viewed the diversions as game-changing projects that would reconnect the river to the marsh and attack root causes of land loss. Fines from the 2010 Gulf oil spill were intended to mostly cover costs.

“It doesn’t look like we’re going to have any greater opportunity or have the funds available to implement such a large-scale project in the future. So, yeah, the potential is that it’s slipping away,” Zeringue said.

Dove said supporters failed to account for millions of dollars in annual maintenance costs, which he argues would have drained the coastal program for decades.

“I’ll tell you what they need is adding machines,” Dove said. “Somebody needs to add it up when they’re doing these projects.”

He argued the coastal program “would have been devastated if we don’t stop that bleeding of that Mid-Barataria.”

While critics have argued canceling the projects means the state will never recover the hundreds of millions of dollars spent, Dove insists alternative projects can provide natural hurricane defenses more quickly and at a lower cost.

“When you dredge, you build land immediately,” Dove said.

He noted every project he suggests already exists in the state’s coastal master plan.

Dove said a long list of major projects is in the engineering phase, including:

• Myrtle Grove Diversion — A smaller diversion authorized by Congress in the 2007 Water Resources Development Act would channel between 2,500 and 15,000 cubic feet per second into Barataria Bay. The project would include a long-distance pipeline from the Mississippi River to create a marsh. Zeringue and others argue starting over could force years of delay. However, Dove insists the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers can build on the work it performed nearly two decades ago. Because the diversion could be a federal project, Dove argues the federal government could cover 65% of construction costs.
• Barataria Landbridge — A companion project includes a 23.5-mile landbridge, a strip of land that would separate freshwater areas from saltwater to the south. Created with dredged material, Dove said the project would include bayous to allow for natural tidal flows.
• Fourchon Segmented Breakwater Rocks — 5.5 miles of shoreline protection near Port Fourchon.
• Casse-Tête Island Restoration — The project would restore this island, about 3 miles north of East Timbalier.
• Wine Island Restoration — The 1995 Wine Island Restoration created a rock dike surrounding the deteriorated island and used dredged sediment to increase the island’s elevation. While the effort failed, Dove argues a rock barrier done properly would revive this small island in Terrebonne Parish.
• White Lake Restoration and Rehabilitation — The White Lake Wetlands Conservation Area in Vermilion Parish covers approximately 72,000 acres, of which 75% is freshwater marsh. CPRA is working with the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries to stabilize shorelines and levees in several areas of the refuge experiencing significant erosion. The first phase of work is expected to begin in early 2026.
• Rockefeller Rock Extension — Segmented breakwater rocks installed along the beach at the Rockefeller State Wildlife Refuge have succeeded in cutting wave action and protecting the shoreline. This project would provide another phase in areas that, without protection, have lost as much as 80 feet of beach annually.
• Grand Isle Segmented Breakwater Rocks — Along the shore of Grand Isle, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers would install 15,000 linear feet of rocks. Dove said existing rocks have protected shoreline and allowed sand to accrete along the beach.
• Chandeleur Island Restoration — A $300 million project would restore 13.5 miles of beach and dune along the northern stretch of the Chandeleur Island chain, part of a national wildlife refuge and an important ecosystem for nesting birds and endangered sea turtles.

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