Posted on January 13, 2025
Opponents of the Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion sense victory on the horizon
NEW ORLEANS – Before many people had even heard of Louisiana’s largest coast restoration project, George Ricks set out to kill it.
“It was like hunting bear with a BB gun,” said Ricks, a charter boat captain in St. Bernard Parish, who founded The Save Louisiana Coalition in 2013.
Twelve years later, Ricks and other opponents of the Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion appear on the cusp of victory.
Governor Jeff Landry has slammed the $3.1 billion project’s costs and recently argued it was rushed through the federal permitting process.
Mid-Barataria, which is designed to channel up to 75,000 cubic feet of Mississippi River water and sediment into the bay near Myrtle Grove, has been the centerpiece of Louisiana’s restoration efforts.
Two years ago, the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority under then-Governor John Bel Edwards won the required federal permits to build the project.
Since Landry’s inauguration, construction work has slowed to a trickle as the state re-evaluates the project and lawsuits drag on.
“Finally, somebody in government has a sensible approach,” Ricks said.
While computer models show the diversion would build 21 square miles of land over the next 50 years, commercial fishing interests fear the large amounts of fresh water entering Barataria Bay would devastate marine life.
Studies also show, for example, the diversion would virtually wipe out the population of bottlenose dolphins in the bay.
“This project is going to break our culture,” Landry told a Senate Committee in November.
Most of the funding for the project has flowed from fines and settlements connected to the 2010 Macondo Well blowout and oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Recently, federal trustees on the board that administers most of the money threatened to demand the state return roughly $500 million already spent on the project if the state cancels it.
In a letter to the trustees last month, Landry asked for clarification.
“These funds do not belong to you,” Landry wrote. “They are Louisiana allocated funds.”
Some supporters of the diversion have suggested that while the funding is allocated for Louisiana, the Trustee Implementation Group made up of both federal and state representatives, could theoretically direct the money to another entity.
For example, they could authorize federal agencies to rebuild barrier islands.
The governor told the Louisiana Senate Transportation Committee the project’s costs have exploded, from an estimated $1.5 billion in 2016 to $3.1 billion today.
Diversion critics have argued the money could be sprinkled along other parts of the cost, which also have needs.
“That’s not going to do anything for Morgan City,” Ricks said. “That’s not going to do anything for the western part of the state.”
Redistributing the funds may be complicated since Congress and the courts put guard rails around the funding.
One pot of money, for example, can only be spent on barrier islands and diversions.
“The same way that I can’t spend federal money that I get for a stadium, I can’t use that to build a hospital, or the other way around,” said Mark Davis, Director of the Tulane University Institute on Water Resources Law and Policy. “These dollars came with strings.”
Landry has talked of reaching a compromise, possibly involving a modified effort and smaller diversion.
“I don’t have any idea where we are right now,” Davis said. “The legislature said they are going to look at this following the governor’s comments, but I don’t know what role they really have in this.”
Davis believes Landry probably has the authority to pull the plug on the project if he chooses to do so.
However, lawmakers have raised questions about whether that would open the state to lawsuits by contractors and subcontractors who had anticipated millions of dollars in work.
Even if the trustees sign off on a different concept, that would clear just one hurdle.
A smaller diversion would have to clear the federal permitting process all over again, requiring the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to undertake an environmental assessment.
Depending on the findings, that could require a full-fledged Environmental Impact Statement, a process involving multiple federal agencies which could take years.
“Water act permits, endangered species consultations, all of those things,” Davis said. “Whatever we do next hasn’t gone through that process.”
Supporters have argued a smaller diversion would not address the factors causing Louisiana’s coastal land loss.
Ricks and other critics have argued for dredging projects to create new wetlands and ridges in a shorter time frame.
“There’s no human intervention that’s going to stop what’s going to happen anyway,” Ricks said. “So, let’s tread water for as long as we can. Let’s build levees and give people flood protection now.”
