- Complete wetlands report: Deltas 2010 (PDF - 7691kb)
Report: Coastal land loss will be dramatic by 2100
Published: Wednesday, March 2, 2011 at 6:43 p.m.
Last Modified: Wednesday, March 2, 2011 at 6:43 p.m.
BATON ROUGE — Without action to protect and restore Louisiana's coast, the Gulf of Mexico will cover large chunks of coastal parishes in 90 years, scientists and others say.
America's Wetland Foundation and other sponsors released a report Tuesday from the Deltas 2010 World Dialogues conference, which brought more than 400 experts from around the world to New Orleans in October.
"We know we must stop coastal erosion in Lafourche Parish. It's a matter of survival," Lafourche Parish President Charlotte Randolph said.
Disappearing wetlands have been a known problem for decades. The conference looked at deltas worldwide.
"Science tells us what needs to happen. The hard part is to move past obstacles to get the job done," said King Milling, chairman of America's Wetland Foundation. He said those include lack of a central governmental authority for water resource management, now handled piecemeal by various agencies.
Other roadblocks include the need for a dedicated funding source and the need to design large projects that can create long-term change rather than paying for small projects that might have public support, said Sidney Coffee, senior adviser for the foundation.
Lt. Gov. Jay Dardenne showed a map from a 2009 study that projected trends forward to 2100. It showed Terrebonne, Lafourche and parts of many other parishes swamped by the Gulf, and a slim tendril of land wavering out along the Mississippi River toward where New Orleans once stood.
"All of us in Louisiana are impacted by this reality, not just those along the coast," Dardenne said.
Coffee said problems include whether plans should include moving people out of areas likely to become permanently flooded and how to better inform the public about the risks of coastal land loss.
The America's Wetland Foundation and other partners will hold planning meetings with coastal communities in Louisiana and across the Gulf Coast, said Valsin Marmillion, managing director of the foundation. The first such meetings will be March 22-23 in Lake Charles.
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