Louisiana has a lengthy wish list of master plans and coastal visions(see, for example
this or
this ) that tend to stress two things above all else: The need for a strong partnership of federal, state, and local governments to work towards an effectively managed coast, and the need for sound scientific guidance in the decision making process. The partnership and the guidance form the base on which restoration and management efforts are supposed to be built. In fact, the plans themselves aren't even particularly important when compared with the functional framework. The introduction to Louisiana's Master Plan for a Sustainable Coast makes it clear that that the plan's contents are meant to evolve "as our understanding of the landscape improves and technical advances are made," but that the partnership is expected to endure.
Because the partnership is so important, it's troubling to see state and local officials decide that the scientists and the federal government aren't full partners unless they agree with everything that the state or a parish wants to do, experience and expertise be damned. Oil spill news has come awfully fast since the sinking of the BP Deepwater Horizon rig on April 20th. To bring everybody up to speed, here is a brief chronology of oil spill events, emphasizing the political battle over the berms and the rock jetties.
April 20-April 23The BP Deepwater Horizon suffers a blowout, leading to the ongoing spill in the Gulf.
April 23-early JunePoor booming practices largely waste one of the most important resources in fighting the spill.
May 11 - May 27As soon as it became clear that the oil spill would be a major, long term issue, Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungusser reached into the secret safe behind his bookcase and pulled out his emergency barrier island restoration plan, or berm plan. Nungusser surely thought, when the plan was originally formulated, that it had no chance of being funded, and so it seems that he never bothered to run it past anybody with any expertise on barrier island systems. If he had sent the plan out for a bit of review, he surely would have found out that certain elements of his plan were likely to do massive harm to the barrier island system. But he hadn't, so he happily submitted the existing plan to the Corps for permitting.
The coastal scientific community in Louisiana, which is quite large, and which until late April/early May of this year felt like a respected participant in discussions about Louisiana's coastal future, was quietly watching the news and waiting to be contacted for the opportunity to dispense sage advice. But instead of receiving state officials looking for help with writing an oil-protection plan, scientists began to find out through the grapevine that there already was a plan making its way through the permitting process. As elements of the plan begin to trickle out, the coastal scientific community as a whole essentially shot coffee through its collective nose in a classic cartoon display of shattered equanimity. Federal scientists at the various regulatory agencies began to panic as they came under intense political pressure to approve a plan that they thought would do more harm than good. University and independent scientists were fuming that they were not even consulted on a plan of this magnitude. And suddenly, with almost no warning whatsoever, the partnership of federal, state and local officials, and scientists was broken into two teams. In one corner, calling for immediate action, and damn the consequences, were the state and parish officials, while in the other corner sat the federal regulatory bureaucracy and the community of coastal scientists, not so much calling for anything in particular as trying to regain their bearings and put the kaibosh on some of the truly awful ideas then under consideration.
May 27Fast forward a few weeks, and the Corps
approved the portion of the berm plan that was least likely to result in significant degradation of the barrier island system, and sat on the rest.
Early June - July 6 Jefferson Parish, incredibly, reacted to the denial of most of the berm permit by submitting an even more outlandish request to build rock dikes across 70-80% of several tidal passes heading into Barataria Bay, and the Corps, with a distinct feeling of deja vu
rejected the plan as potentially destructive, though this time the plan is rejected in its entirety. The Jindal administration, which had, for lack of any constructive ideas, been ratcheting up its rhetorical war on the federal government and on the scientific community for weeks, put its fingers deep into its own ears and
erupted into namecalling.
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I am not terribly worried that berms, rock dikes, levees, walls, etc. will be built that will directly harm the barrier island system. It seems to me that there are enough good people in the regulatory agencies to ensure that nothing actively harmful is done to the coastal landscape. But while the danger of constructing counterproductive structures may be small, there is real political damage being done every time that an unreasonable request is denied. The relationship between the state and the scientific community is toxic right now, and that breach will require significant mending. Perhaps even more importantly, there is significant mistrust of scientists by the general population, partially a result of the permit denials. It only takes a short glance through the comments section of
this recent editorial by retired professor Len Bahr to see that the Jindal administration's antipathy towards scientists has taken hold with the public.
Scientists, for their part, have not done a very good job of explaining to the public why these plans are ill-conceived, and it's easy to see why a public that has long supported comprehensive barrier island restoration would support berms and jetties in the absence of additional information (Len Bahr himself
supported the berm plan before details became available. ). Unfortunately, because scientists have not been able to explain to the public why the berms and the dikes are bad ideas, and because the Jindal administration and others has made actively misleading statements about their long term effectiveness at protecting against hurricanes, there is a trust and communications gap between the public and the scientific community that will be significantly harder to repair than the gap with the politicians.
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