Clap if You Believe In Wetlands

 
Which is disappearing faster: Alaska’s tidewater glaciers, or Louisiana’s coastline?

  Photo by Edmund D. Fountain

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          “There’s places where I had cattle pens...” said Earl Armstrong [of the Mississippi Delta]. “Right now
           we run through there with airboats.”

Miles of rich fertile land is disappearing while residents watch in stunned disbelief.

          “I see what was,” said Lloyd Serigne, who grew up in the fishing and trapping village of Delacroix. “People
          today — like my nephew, he’s pretty young — he sees what is.”

Oil companies dredged canals to make operations cheaper, and the Corp of Engineers built levees to protect residents from floods. Add in wells, rising sea level, and more and you have what some are calling “one of the greatest environmental and economic disasters in the nation’s history.” 2,000 square miles have already been wiped off the map, turned to open water in just 80 years. Within our children’s lifetime, most of the “boot” of Louisiana could disappear underwater, the state sheared off east to west just below Baton Rouge.

          Pelicans circle in confusion over nesting islands that have washed away since last spring.

          Shrimpers push their wing nets in lagoons that were land five years ago.

          “If you’re a young person you think this is what it’s supposed to look like,” Lambert said. “Then when you’re            old enough to know, it’s too late.”

Is there good news? Yes. A restoration plan has been drafted to reconnect the delta with its river, which might begin to build land at the rate it’s being lost.

What’s the political and economic likelihood of the plan being implemented? Learn more in this grist.org article by Marshall, Jacobs and Shaw.

Thank you Propublica.org, grist.org, The Lens, Knapp+Lucia Photography, Bob Marshall, Al Shaw, Brian Jacobs, Della Hasselle, Ellis Lucia, Edmund D. Fountain and others for your work on this issue.