Posted on April 28, 2025
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has suspended a permit for the stalled Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion project, citing the current uncertainty surrounding the plan and claiming Louisiana officials “deliberately withheld” information during the project’s initial evaluation process.
In a letter sent Friday to the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, Corps officials said the withheld information and other factors require a reevaluation of the permit for the massive project, a centerpiece of the state’s $50 billion Coastal Master Plan.
The Corps has ordered any ongoing work authorized by the permit to cease within 10 days. The state had already issued a 90-day pause on work related to the project on April 4 to prevent a further escalation in cost as Gov. Jeff Landry’s administration seeks an alternative plan.
Corps officials stated in a previous letter to the state obtained by The Times-Picayune that it should have previously had information from a 2022 engineering report, but that the contents would have no effect on the permit. Corps officials now say that information and several other issues caused the Corps to reassess.
“This suspension is based on the state’s actions (including failures to act or to obtain compromise), its public statements and positions, the new information and potentially changed circumstances since permit issuance,” Army Corps Col. Cullen Jones wrote in the latest letter, addressed to CPRA Chairman Gordon Dove.
Landry on Saturday criticized his predecessor John Bel Edwards’ administration, who handled the initial permit process when it was issued in 2022.
“They failed to tell the public that the Mid-Barataria project would have cost taxpayers over $50 million a year in dredging, increased the hypoxia-destroying our fishing around our great jewel of Grand Isle, and impact the drinking water of Jefferson, Plaquemines, St. Bernard, and Orleans parishes,” Landry said on X.
Edwards in turn defended his administration, calling Landry’s accusations “flat out wrong.” Edwards noted the letter lists several other reasons for halting work on the diversion project, “most notably — that the Landry administration stopped work on it and refused to handle the operations required.”
“Gov. Landry’s attempt to scapegoat is exactly why partisan politics has no place in Louisiana’s coastal restoration work, but he can’t help himself,” Edwards said in a statement.
Among the issues detailed by the Corps are unresolved negotiations between the state and Plaquemines Parish, where the project broke ground in 2023, and Landry’s decision earlier this month to halt construction.
The diversion project as originally planned would funnel up to 75,000 cubic feet per second of water and sediment from the Mississippi River into the Barataria Basin to rebuild lost wetlands. It was projected to build 21 square miles of land over 50 years and was issued a permit for construction by the Army Corps after an exhaustive environmental study.
Map of the Mid-Barataria sediment diversion project.
But Landry’s administration has argued that the $3 billion plan is too expensive, including the dredging maintenance that would be required to achieve the project’s goal of building new land.
Despite Landry’s decision, a small amount of work was allowed to continue, including relocating a pipeline in the area and site maintenance. But those activities have been put on hold with the permit’s suspension.
Officials have discussed studying a smaller-scale diversion, an idea that has also been championed by commercial shrimpers and oyster growers in the area who would have been forced to move their operations or find work elsewhere under the original plan.
Coastal advocates, however, have criticized efforts to delay the project and salvage what’s left of Louisiana’s shrinking coast.
“Our coastal program has always successfully prioritized science and the public good over politics,” officials with Restore the Mississippi River Delta said in a prepared statement. “We cannot afford to play political games with the future of Louisiana.”
The permit suspension follows CRPA’s approved $2 billion annual spending plan, which included $573 million for the Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion Project, and $2.92 billion in funding related to the BP oil spill has been approved for the project.
