#mbsd

As a part of our state’s Coastal Master Plan to address our land loss crisis, Louisiana broke ground in August 2023 to reconnect the Mississippi to its distributaries in a project known as the Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion (MBSD). This is the largest ecosystem restoration project ever attempted in the United States. But this effort is now under threat. Governor Landry has delayed further construction and threatened to pull the plug on this game-changing effort.  Reconnecting the river is key to restoring our coast. Show your support for the inclusion of MBSD in Louisiana’s annual coastal plan by submitting a comment to Louisiana’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority. Every comment proves to our leaders that the MBSD is important, impactful and should move forward as planned.

Protect Louisiana's coasts!

Comment period closes Saturday, March 22

Human efforts to restrain the Mississippi River have left coastal Louisiana communities vulnerable as the river muds are no longer reaching the delta it once built. 

The MBSD utilizes knowledge from over 30 years of research and experimentation to revitalize the decimated Barataria basin by reconnecting the river to rebuild wetlands.

These wetlands will reduce storm damage, help control floods and provide sustainable homes for fish and wildlife.

Alongside other state investments in coastal protection and restoration, the MBSD will significantly reduce the costs of future disasters and create economic opportunities within Louisiana at a time when these are desperately needed — including supporting more than 12,000 jobs.

After much uncertainty and delay around the MBSD, it is crucially important to show public support about how this foundational project will impact our communities and livelihoods. Submit a comment today to voice your support.

@one-time-i-dreamt

@tenaflyviper

@akron-squirrel

@ifihadaworldofmyown

@justice-for-jacob-marley

@voicetalentbrendan

@thebigdeepcheatsy

@what-is-my-aesthetic

@ravenlynclemens

@writerofweird

@anon-lephant

@mentally-quiet-spycrab

Ironically, had I been invited, I wouldn’t have been driven to write this report. Private PR companies seeking to control access to information and public debate on behalf of the government about projects as consequential as the MBSD is dangerous — and is part of a larger concerning trend.

A growing number of these PR and consultancy companies work for clients seeking permits as well as the agencies responsible for issuing them, offering a one-stop-shop for expediting permits, with a team of communication specialists, consultants, engineers, and lobbyists at the ready. Two scoping hearings I attending this year held by the U.S. Coast Guard for floating LNG projects off Grande Isle, Louisiana, were moderated by third-party contractors who offer permit expediting services for industry. 

Despite the region’s shrinking wetlands, the government continues to permit new LNG export facilities on the Gulf Coast, and is encouraging hydrogen and carbon capture sequestration developments, though they too will lead to further land loss. Such developments require new pipelines, and constructing pipelines in the wetlands is one of the main drivers of the state’s land-loss crisis. 

Thirty miles south of New Orleans is where the MBSD construction will take place. A break will be made on the West Bank of the Mississippi River levee in Plaquemines Parish to allow for controlled releases of the river’s freshwater, laden with sediment and nutrients, through a two-mile-long concrete channel with a gate system re-connecting the river’s flow to the Barataria Basin.

The project’s supporters assert diverting the river to its historic path and unleashing the power of nature will result in the creation of 21 square miles of new submerged land in the basin’s wetlands over the next 50 years. This new land will create a natural barrier that will help protect the New Orleans metro area from storm surge, project proponents say. But scientist point out that the modern Mississippi River isn’t the same as it was 100 years ago — its land-building sediment load has been degraded due to the manmade water controls, and nutrient concentrations in the water are much higher. The project’s planners acknowledge that when the polluted river water is introduced into the basin’s brackish saltwater environment, increased initial land loss will occur as fresh water kills some of the marsh grass that holds the land together; however, a study determined that the land loss could be more substantial than the modelling for the project reflects.

The diversion project lies at the intersection of two crises: the state’s alarming coastal land-loss rate and the essential threat of climate change. This makes it ripe for disaster capitalism, a phrase Naomi Klein coined in her book “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.” Following a destabilizing event, funding is made available with little debate for projects the public is told that will fix or mitigate issues that actually advance corporate interests.

...

In an op-ed about disaster capitalism, Klein pointed out that some of the same companies that profited off the Iraq war — Bechtel, Fluor, Halliburton, CH2M Hill, and Parsons — also profited in New Orleans after Katrina. CH2M Hill, now owned by Jacobs, is playing a role in the diversion project, as one of the many firms contracted by the CPRA. Those same companies, some of which have new names after being acquired, are all now also positioned play a role in the hydrogen and CCS market — an unsubstantiated climate solution that is being heavily unwritten with public funds. With billions on the table to combat the state’s land-loss crisis from restoration settlements funds from the BP oil spill, and billions more from the federal government to combat climate change, the disaster capitalist vultures are circling. Attending the groundbreaking offered me a peek at those utilizing a revolving door between public and private sector jobs allowing them access to the loot. Among the couple hundred attendees were government officials and an army of consultants, lobbyists, and PR specialist who service the oil and gas industry, at the ready to claim a piece of the pie.

...

The proposed diversion is in realty a 50-year flood of polluted, chemical-laden Mississippi River water that will change the water composition of the Barataria Basin forever. Confusing nutrients with toxic chemicals from upriver farm runoffs, municipal waste systems, hundreds of manufacturing facilities and riverboats and barges doesn’t seem to be in anyone’s best interests.

A report generated by Environment Missouri concludes that more than 12.7 million pounds of toxics including nitrates, arsenic, benzene and mercury were dumped into the Mississippi River in 2010 alone; that number has obviously increased since then with additional industrial development up and down the river. Courtesy of MBSD, all those pollutants will end up in Barataria Bay and surrounding waters and in prime fishing, oystering and crabbing grounds that satisfy our appetites, support our restaurants and go a long way to defining our unique culture.

And while project advocates have spent a lot of time and millions of dollars branding the project as a “sediment” diversion, it is clearly not. Studies demonstrate that the Mississippi River carries only a quarter of the sediment it did in the 1950’s. The latest projections show that the water to sediment ratio generated by MBSD would be 98% water and only 2% sediment.

Moreover, despite claims that the project will somehow miraculously save our coast from the wrath of Mother Nature, the federal government’s own draft Environmental Impact Statement affirms that with the MBSD, total wetland acres would be 85,500 by 2070 but, with no action at all, the total wetland acres would be 72,800 in Barataria. The birdfoot delta would ultimately lose 2,900 wetland acres with the diversion than without it. This means an expenditure of nearly $2 billion to create a mere 9,800 acres – more than $204,000/per acre – of new marshland over 50 years.

Project planners claim that MBSD will reduce storm surge by one foot over that 50-year period through building 20 square miles of marsh. Yet forecasts show that sea levels may well rise by two feet by the year 2050. Clearly, MBSD will do nothing to reduce storm surge or lower flood insurance costs.

Casting MBSD as a job creation project is also disingenuous. It should be fully disclosed that the 7,500 jobs claimed in Maloz’s op-ed are construction centric and of a temporary nature, not permanent jobs Louisiana can build an economy around. And in no way are they a replacement for the nearly 35,000 jobs already provided for by Louisiana’s seafood industry, an industry that will be decimated by MBSD’s five decade long freshwater flood. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Environmental Impact Statement is unambiguous in stating that the project will result in “major, permanent, adverse impacts” on brown shrimp and oysters, two mainstays of our fishing economy and the jobs that depend on it. The trickle-down negative impacts on our tourism, hospitality and restaurant industries should not be hard to imagine.