Posted on May 25, 2021
Projects paid for with $256.6 million in BP oil disaster money
Three major restoration projects to build more than 2,900 acres of marsh, coastal ridges and barrier island beaches and dunes have started construction in southeast Louisiana, Gov. John Bel Edwards announced Wednesday. They are designed to:
- Restore key features of West Grand Terre Island in Jefferson Parish
- Build a more than 7-mile line of wetlands and coastal ridge along Spanish Pass, near Venice in Plaquemines Parish
- Restore wetlands in the Golden Triangle area along northwest Lake Borgne in New Orleans and St. Bernard Parish.
“They will combat erosion, subsidence and saltwater intrusion, and create nearly 5 square miles of land” in some of the most valuable and vulnerable locations along the state’s coastline, Edwards said during a news conference on Coastal Day at the Legislature.
The projects are funded by $256.6 million in fines and natural resource compensation payments by BP and its drilling partners in the aftermath of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil disaster.
The state has completed dozens of restoration projects that have restored thousands of acres of coastal land and built several miles of new hurricane levees since the last Coastal Day at the Legislature in 2019, said Chip Kline, chairman of the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority.
During that time, the agency has used 90 percent of its annual budget to implement, build and maintain individual projects, a break from past years when much of the budget paid for planning, engineering and design, rather than construction, he said.
Kline asked state and local officials attending the news conference to urge senators to restore about $58 million to the authority’s construction funds in House Bill 2, the main budget bill in the current legislative session. The money, which would have funded several dozen restoration and hurricane levee projects, was cut from the budget bill in the House.
Kline also pointed to Edwards’ Climate Initiatives Task Force and the governor’s May 7 decision to have Louisiana join 24 states and Puerto Rico in the U.S. Climate Alliance as new policy initiatives to address climate-related threats to the coast, including sea level rise fueled by global warming.
The task force’s goal, Kline said, is “to look at proposals for how we are going to reduce Louisiana’s greenhouse gas emissions so that we are no longer just reacting to the impacts of climate change but we’re also addressing the causes of climate change.”
By joining the climate alliance, Edwards renewed his 2020 commitment to emission reduction goals set by the Paris Climate Accords, including cutting Louisiana’s greenhouse gas emissions by at least 26 percent from 2005 levels by 2025 and reaching a “net zero” level of climate emissions from 2005 levels by 2050.
The biggest of the three projects announced Wednesday is Spanish Pass, part of a larger plan to restore marsh and coastal ridges across the Barataria Basin. The project will restore 1,500 acres of marsh and 132 acres of higher ridge extending more than 7 miles west from Venice.
The Golden Triangle project will restore 800 acres of wetlands adjacent to the 2-mile Lake Borgne Barrier hurricane floodwall.
On West Grand Terre, about 2.9 million cubic yards of material will be dredged from offshore to rebuild 530 acres of beach, dune and back barrier marshes.
