The Act in Louisiana
The severe loss of coastal wetlands in Louisiana is the primary target of the Breaux Act, both in funding and in careful instruction on how that funding will be used. Those funds marked for Louisiana enable a comprehensive approach to wetland restoration: they fund the actual wetland restoration projects, but just as significantly, they fund the coordinated planning of those efforts as well as monitoring of the projects to measure whether or not they are effective.
Planning
The Act calls upon federal and state governments to pull together into an unprecedented task force to ensure that a breadth of wetland issues are addressed. Representatives from the U.S. Departments of the Army, Interior, Commerce, and Agriculture, and the Environmental Protection Agency, along with the Governor of Louisiana, are mandated by the Act to work together.
In 1993, the Task Force prepared the Louisiana Coastal Wetlands Restoration Plan to assist in identifying and selecting the highest priority restoration projects. The partners made extensive efforts to foster involvement in the planning process by university scientists, landowners, local governments, and a wide variety of other interests and the general public through public hearings, briefings, and interactive local meetings.
The Plan identifies basin-level restoration strategies and projects needed to implement those strategies. and outlines objectives for Breaux Act projects.
Drawing largely from potential projects identified in that plan, the Task Force (with the help of its technical personnel) annually evaluates a list of candidate projects based on the following criteria:
- cost effectiveness
- longevity and sustainability
- risk and uncertainty
- supporting partnerships
- public support
- support for the restoration plan.
As of mid 1997, the Task Force approved six annual priority lists, resulting in selection of 80 projects to address wetland loss in nine coastal hydrologic basins along Louisiana's coast. Of those projects, 62 are anticipated to create, restore, and protect over 73,000 acres of wetlands over the next 20 years. Four projects have been deauthorized after initial selection for various reasons such as inability to obtain land rights. Fourteen are small projects intended to demonstrate new techniques for protecting and restoring wetlands. The Task Force will approve two more priority lists during the current funding phase of the Breaux Act.
The Task Force is also looking to the future in an even larger way by funding feasibility studies of longer-term, larger scale projects. One study addresses the most active natural contributor to wetlands in Louisiana: the Mississippi River. Over 3 years, this study will identify the most efficient, effective, and complete plan for achieving wetland restoration while still providing for navigation, flood control, water supply, and other uses of the river. This study will determine if the investment of federal and state funds in such a plan can be justified by the anticipated benefits. The other feasibility study is addressing the potential for restoring barrier shorelines to protect Louisiana's coastal wetlands; results of that study are expected in 1998.
Projects: How, Why, Where
Projects are carried out by the federal agencies represented on the Task Force, in close cooperation with the state. The projects must take less than 5 years to design and construct, while monitoring them over 20 years will tell us how effective they are in protecting, creating, or restoring wetlands.
Scientific assessment of whether or not projects are reaching their desired goals is typically not possible until at least 3 years after completion. Funds for monitoring Breaux Act projects are set aside throughout their duration, which usually is assumed to be 20 years. If a project is officially deauthorized, those funds can be redirected. This setting aside of project funds is yet another action that recognizes the dynamics of wetlands over time and the need for their long-term care.
The Breaux Act projects selected as of May 1997 are anticipated to create, restore, or protect over 73,000 acres of coastal wetlands in Louisiana.
Breaux Act projects in Louisiana have focused on both creating and restoring coastal wetlands already lost and reducing future wetland losses associated with natural processes and human activities. Restoration projects are generally grouped as
- vegetative, involving planting in vulnerable areas and with appropriate kinds of plants (such as salt-tolerant ones) to help prevent erosion and trap sediment;
- sedimentary, creating or nourishing wetlands by using diverted or dredged sediments;
- structural, using materials such as rock breakwaters to protect existing wetlands that are threatened by erosion;
- hydrologic, controlling the amount of water and, when needed, salinity, flowing into or out of wetlands, eventually restoring more natural flows and salinity patterns.
A major accomplishment of the Breaux Act restoration planning process was to delineate the unique landscape features and key processes affecting wetlands in each of the nine hydrologic basins in coastal Louisiana. The various causes of wetland loss, and the specific solutions for offsetting those losses, vary from basin to basin. Some specific problems and how they are being addressed through Breaux Act projects follow.
- The basins with active deltas, those of the Mississippi and Atchafalaya Rivers, have been affected by maintenance of large navigation channels through the deltas. Restoration efforts focus on improved management of sediment carried by those rivers, to facilitate accretion of new deltaic marsh. Small-scale sediment diversions (artificial crevasses) created in the Mississippi Delta provide clear evidence that large-scale delta-management projects will be successful as well.
- The Pontchartrain, Breton Sound, Barataria, and Terrebonne basins are inactive delta regions where the Mississippi River once provided abundant sediment. Causes of wetland loss in these regions include subsidence, sea-level rise, erosion, excessive ponding, saltwater intrusion, and urban development. Projects reintroduce river water, sediments, and nutrients by a variety of means, such as siphons and large-scale freshwater and sediment diversions; use dredged material to restore wetlands and barrier islands; reduce erosion by wetland plantings; and restore natural hydrology to reduce excessive ponding in marshes and swamps and prevent salt water from moving into previously fresh areas.
- In the chenier plain of southwestern Louisiana-the Teche/Vermilion, Mermentau, and Calcasieu/Sabine basins-the greatest threats to wetlands are shoreline erosion, saltwater intrusion, excessive ponding, and reductions of fresh water and nutrients. The loss of the shoreline causes breakup of interior wetlands by allowing salt water to penetrate further into fresh marsh areas. Once plants die, fragile organic marsh soils can be easily eroded. Stabilization projects such as marsh plantings and breakwaters protect banks from further erosion, and water control structures modify salinities and water levels. Dredged material helps replenish what has been lost by creating new marsh.
Monitoring Efforts
Before project design is even completed, a plan for systematic evaluation of the results is developed. The monitoring plan for a project defines protocols for collecting data and information used to scientifically evaluate the effectiveness of the restoration project. Standardizing how this information is collected is vitally important so that everyone involved can get an overall picture of how well a project is working. Researchers from Louisiana's universities help plan monitoring efforts as well as review results, thus broadening the base of technical expertise involved with restoration.
Cooperative efforts among the federal and state agencies continue well after a project is completed as participants collect data from the field, aerial photographs, and satellite images and provide their findings to the Task Force in a series of regular reports. That information can be used to develop modifications in the operation of those projects or to point out the need for design changes in future projects to better achieve wetland goals. In extreme cases, a project might be deauthorized if it is not achieving its goals.
Education
Public awareness of the need to maintain and restore coastal wetlands is crucial to their future survival. One of the earliest achievements in the Breaux Act process was the understanding that the public had to be involved in the identification and prioritization of projects. Public meetings occur throughout coastal Louisiana to assist in identifying wetland restoration issues. The Task Force carefully considered input from previous public meetings during their development of Louisiana's coastal wetland restoration plan. In addition, the Task Force works closely with the Citizen Participation Group, made up of a variety of statewide organizations varying from local landowners to voters groups.
The Breaux Act newsletter, Watermarks, is published quarterly. The newsletter features articles about creation and restoration projects and issues as well as pieces focusing on the individuals and the federal and state agencies involved with restoring Louisiana's coastal wetlands (call 504 862-2786 or 862-2201 for more information about Watermarks).
The Task Force also recognized the need to better inform the public about wetlands, the Act, and its accomplishments, so an outreach committee of representatives from the cooperating agencies was formed in 1995. Interested citizens can now find more information about the Act in slide shows, brochures, and a site on the World Wide Web (lacoast.gov) where information about restoration projects is literally at a user's fingertips.