Anywhoo, in the spirit of the above... the state has released released its 50 year master plan for coastal restoration which you can access at this site. Today out at UNO the state is presenting the plan in a public meeting beginning at 1 PM with a formal hearing and comment session beginning at 5:30.
If you're going to the hearing, or if you're just interested in the plan at all, you may benefit from reading these short analyses from the Times-Picayune's Bob Marshall and The Lens' Mark Moseley.
Marshall begins by telling us the plan instills him with a sense of hope because it appears to take a harder, clearer line regarding the political obstacles to saving the coast.
The importance of that one accomplishment cannot be overstated. As author and levee authority member John Barry has pointed out, the biggest obstacle to solving our problems was never engineering, but politics. Not necessarily the Washington kind, but the local politics of competing interest groups.
Everyone has wanted to "fix" the coast, but often only if that fix didn't mean impacting their lives. From the shipping industry to sports fishers, if a project to stop land loss was going to hurt their interests, a quick phone to their Congressional members could scuttle the plans.
It's heartening to read that Marshall is encouraged here, but I would advise continued skepticism. It's one thing for a document like this to enumerate the choices it recommends our leaders make. It's another thing entirely to expect that to suddenly change the process by which those choices are made, as even Marshall has to admit later in the article.
The CPRA doesn't have the authority to put this plan into action. That lies with the Legislature and governor. In the week since the plan was released there's already been push back from interest groups who could be damaged. I'm not saying the plan is perfect, or expecting it to race through untouched. Maybe the plan can be tweaked to lessen impacts, but the politicians need support to resist ignoring science.
Something about Louisiana politicians needing to resist ignoring science doesn't inspire the greatest of confidence.
Meanwhile Moseley further diminishes our confidence in the practicality of the plan itself by focusing in on one peculiar item.
The coastal plan is a fine document, but the real headline, in my view, is the state’s belief that they can deliver 500-year storm protection for Greater New Orleans for the bargain price of $1.8 billion. And the subheadline to that should be: “Inexplicably, they suggest we wait decades to do it.”
That is quite the curiosity. I'd be interested to learn whether or not it draws much follow-up during tonight's hearing.
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