People’s Ideas Shape Projects
Planning the Groundwork for Protection and Restoration
Planning, protecting, restoring — the Coastal Wetlands Planning, Protection and Restoration Act (CWPPRA) is charged with performing these tasks.
But unlike many other governmental programs, CWPPRA invites public participation in shaping its projects. Often citizen involvement is augmented by people joining with others and acting through an organization. In the following articles, WaterMarks considers the contributions of several of the many organizations that support CWPPRA in its work on behalf of coastal Louisiana.
The Planning Paradigm
“The very beginning, the foundation of any plan,” says Mark Ford, the executive director of the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana (CRCL), “is a paradigm for its possibility. What makes public projects that affect a large population successful? It’s an atmosphere of acceptance and support.”
Local knowledge of coastal conditions, from water quality to hydrologic patterns to oyster beds and shipping traffic, helps scientists and engineers design projects to address the needs of specific locales.
Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation
According to Ford, it is the work of CRCL to create that atmosphere for coastal restoration. Before any CWPPRA project is so much as a stake in the ground, CRCL is engaged in educating the public and persuading them to embrace the sacrifices that the project may ask of them.
CRCL looks for any way possible to empower stakeholders — individuals, communities, organizations, industries — to take responsibility for coastal protection and restoration. “Often we link together people who don’t know one another but share an interest, a concern,” says Ford. “As the need for restoration and protection increases, so do the opportunities for public participation. We’re a catalyst for making those opportunities happen.”
Plan as Concept
One of 28 community-led estuary programs established by congressional mandate under the Clean Water Act, the Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary Program (BTNEP) fosters a healthy estuary system by addressing environmental conservation and restoration at a watershed level. Its initial task, developing the Comprehensive Conservation Management Plan (CCMP) for the Barataria and Terrebonne basins, was completed in 1996. In the several coastal planning efforts since, including that of the current Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, the basic blueprint of the CCMP has been reaffirmed.
Clean-up campaigns involve citizens of all ages. Trash, debris, and pet waste are common urban pollutants that degrade water quality in lakes and streams.
Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation
As sound a foundation for planning as the CCMP has proved to be, the program director of BTNEP, Kerry St. Pé, thinks BTNEP’s greatest contribution to environmental restoration is the collaborations that result from its network. “We’ve brought together hundreds and hundreds of people from federal and state agencies, from the educational and scientific communities, from business and industry, from the public at large,” St. Pé says. “We look at the entire system and try to link various components together.”
The CCMP proposed 51 actions to achieve a viable estuary within 25 years. The public is involved in teams that carry out these actions. “Each team sets the course for its project, determines the tasks, and decides how to divide annual funding,” says St. Pé.
Traveling by air boat to minimize damage to fragile marshes, the CWPPRA Environmental and Engineering Work Group inspects the site of a proposed project.
USACE
BTNEP’s role has evolved over the years as it expands programs in pursuit of goals set forth in the CCMP. Consistently viewed as a credible source of information, BTNEP remains involved in public outreach and education and in project comment and review.
Plan as Design
When reclaiming the waters and habitats of the Lake Pontchartrain Basin involves coastal projects, the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation (LPBF) approaches CWPPRA as a natural partner.
“We can identify and recommend projects and provide technical assistance,” says John Lopez, director of LPBF’s coastal program. “And we can educate, advocate, and encourage citizens to support the projects. But our greatest strength lies in building partnerships among all parties interested in restoring and preserving the basin.”
Invited by the lead agency for CWPPRA's Goose Point/Pointe Platte Marsh Creation project, the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation examined the science behind the project and suggested improvements to its design. The goal of the project is to prevent further breaches along the lake shoreline, rebuild marsh habitat and reduce areas of open water behind the shoreline.
USFWS
The marsh creation project at Goose Point, along the northern shoreline of Lake Pontchartrain, exemplifies how well those partnerships can work. Invited by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to participate, LPBF monitored the science and engineering aspects of the project during its development. “We had some questions about how the modeling was done,” Lopez says. “We wanted to be sure the plan was right, to determine the best possible design.”
During a visit to the project site, Lopez met with a local resident who shared his observations about water flow patterns in the area. “Local people know the geography well,” Lopez says. “Because this man was willing to get involved, we were able to change the plans a little and avoid a negative effect on the natural hydrology.”
A Road Map for Rebuilding the Coast
Public Input Produces Innovation
By the late 1990s the battle to save Louisiana’s coast had seen numerous small victories. But the state still lacked a comprehensive plan integrating federal, state and local restoration efforts and offering a clear vision for the coast’s future.
Incorporating residents’ input gathered at 65 public meetings across the coast, scientists and federal, state and local governments hammered out a plan supporting the environment, economy and culture of Louisiana’s wetlands. Released in 1998 by the CWPPRA Task Force, Coast 2050: Toward a Sustainable Coastal Louisiana proposed integrating protection and restoration efforts throughout the region to reestablish the wetlands’ natural processes — accumulation of sediment, diversity of habitat and landforms, and the movement of organisms throughout the ecosystem.
Coast 2050 provided the first coast-wide assessment of changes in fish and wildlife populations, outlined quantitative methods for projecting future land loss, and, in partnership with the public, established restoration priorities and strategies that CWPPRA uses in its project planning and selection process.