One Voice, One Mission: Coastal Louisianans Support Coast 2050

When you ask most Americans to imagine the good life in the year 2050, their fantasies are likely to sound like the stuff of science fiction. But if you ask people in coastal Louisiana, the things they imagine are probably much more down to earth. They envision thriving wetlands, restored barrier islands and flourishing watersheds.

To support those visions of their future, Louisianans are speaking out with one voice and standing up as one unit. In December 1998, Coast 2050, a statewide landscape restoration strategy, was accepted by the Breaux Act Task Force and Louisiana's State Wetlands Authority. This acceptance was matched by the unanimous approval of all 20 coastal parishes, making Coast 2050 the first restoration plan in Louisiana to be supported by federal, state and local governments. As Bill Good, administrator of the Coastal Restoration Division of the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources, says, Louisiana's unity should help convince policy makers of the importance of coastal restoration.

Four Regions
The Coast 2050 strategy divides coastal Louisiana into four geographic regions. Each region will utilize different strategies and tactics to reverse land loss trends along the coast. A map of the 4 Coast 2050 regions

Coast 2050's general acceptance throughout coastal Louisiana was possible because of the method in which the plan was approached. Regional Teams held a total of 65 meetings and workshops to gain public insight into regional and coastwide problems and plan solutions. Technicians then reviewed the public's suggested solutions to ensure they were feasible. In the end, Coast 2050's success evolved from the compilation, comparison and consolidation of everyone's input until there was a consensus for the coast's restoration goals and strategies.

Treating the Disease, Not the Symptoms

From its first days of planning, Coast 2050's overall goal has been to develop an all-encompassing plan to treat the entire ecosystem crisis instead of preparing isolated projects that only patch problem areas. In other words, Coast 2050 will treat the disease, not the symptoms. The plan outlines two scales of strategies - a regional ecosystem scale and a small, local scale. As both regional and small restoration strategies are conducted throughout coastal Louisiana, their combined results will make a significant impact. Each regional strategy will begin by focusing on three basic goals:

to accumulate at least enough sediment and / or organic matter to equal the combined effects of sea level rise and subsidence
to maintain a diversity of habitats including swamps, marshes of various salinities, natural and artificial levees, chenier ridges and barrier islands
to maintain ecosystem links to allow ex-changes of energy, materials and organisms

Future projects will be developed from these regional strategies.

Coastal residents, like those of Holly Beach shown below, stand the most to lose in Louisiana's battle against coastal land loss. Disintegrating barrier islands, rising sea levels, and coastwide subsidence all combine to make a precarious future for southern Louisiana. Coast 2050 marks the first major cooperative effort among local residents and government agencies to address these problems together.
(ACOE photo)

We Have a Plan

Now that Louisiana has developed Coast 2050 to address the large-scale problem of coastland restoration and provide projects with universal goals, it must be implemented. Construction of large-scale landscape remedies, however, will require a major increase in restoration spending.

In fact, current state and Breaux Act restoration projects address only 22 percent of land loss problems. Breaux Act projects, a significant percent of current restoration projects, receive up to $40 million a year in funding. Coast 2050 intends to increase that effort tenfold. That means spending at least $400 million a year on restoration projects totaling $14 billion over the next 30 years.

Increasing the dollars means new funding options must be identified. Whether these projects are financed by state, federal or other efforts, they need to be backed by Louisiana's strong commitment to saving the coastline by the year 2050. Bill Good sums it up when he says: "We have a plan. It will cost more, but it will be well worth it."