Agencies must implement sediment diversion projects quickly to safeguard habitat in the Gulf of Mexico for the sake of sportsmen and local communities
Land loss in the Gulf of Mexico has been a constant threat to a long list of species, including largemouth bass, redfish, speckled trout, tarpon, teal, and gadwalls. Fortunately, the Louisiana legislature has just approved a Coastal Master Plan that will put $50 billion to work over the next 50 years to address the increasingly severe combination of land loss and sea level rise.
The difficult truth is that it’s too expensive to recover all that has been lost, but implementing sediment diversion projects is key to sustaining what’s left. The longer we wait, the more land we lose—and Gulf anglers, especially, will become worse off.
Yet, the Army Corps of Engineers has delayed a much-needed project for more than five years. In fact, after signing an agreement in 2016 to guarantee review of the Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion project within three years, the Corps announced that they’d actually wait until 2022.
By then, there might not be anything left to protect.
Anglers Pay the Price
Captain Terry Lambert talks about the waters in the lower Barataria Basin west of Buras like they’re family members and friends who have passed away.
“Over here to the left is where Chicharas Bay used to be and over here to the west was Cyprien Bay,” said the veteran guide, gesturing from the deck of his boat. Lambert has fished the areas both east and west of the Mississippi River in lower Plaquemines Parish for the last 30 years. “Where we’re fishing now, these three little clumps of cane are all that’s left of Dry Cypress Bayou. It’s hard to believe sometimes when you’re out here that a pile of shells here and there is all that’s left of our marsh on the west side of the river.”
Lambert guided our crew of outdoor writers and conservationists to a handful of washed out and submerged spoil banks out of Joshua’s Marina in early April, on one of the few days he said he could fish the west side of the river this spring. The trip was productive—50 beautiful, textbook two-pound speckled trout crossed the gunwales of Lambert’s boat that morning.
“We’re only here because the wind is blowing less than 10 knots today,” he said. “If it blows any harder, the water gets too dirty and it’s too hard to fish in all this open water. When I started guiding here, we always fished the west side of the river. There was marsh here then. There was protection. Now, there’s so little left here that most days we are forced to cross the river to where there’s marsh, so we can escape the wind and find fish.”
“When I started guiding here, we always fished the west side of the river. There was marsh here then.” Share on XFederal Agencies Must Step Up
The longer it takes to get sediment flowing and the more land that’s lost, the harder—and more expensive—it becomes to achieve sustainability, growth, and certainty for Louisiana’s coastal communities. Delaying this time-sensitive project is not only troubling, it’s irresponsible. That’s why the TRCP, along with 32 other groups, sent a letter to the secretaries of defense and commerce urging them to come up with a plan to expedite, rather than delay, this time-sensitive project.
“Delaying the construction of the Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion would threaten the safety of coastal communities and make it much more difficult and expensive to sustain ecological diversity in a critically rich ecosystem,” our groups wrote.
To see how the diversion will work to literally build the coastline and its habitat, watch this video about plans for the Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion.
Thanks for covering us down here 🙂