Cost/Benefit

The Native American inhabitants of the Grand Bayou village are being asked to move. The state's coastal plan says the cost of protecting them is too great compared to the "risk" of their continuing to exist there The cost to them of moving, though, is immeasurable.

“The only thing they offer us is to move. But we can’t move,” said Rosina Phillipe, 60, an elder and spokeswoman for the Atakapas-Ishak/Chawaska tribe. “For us, home is more than the building you live in. It’s everything in the environment that surrounds you. If you leave, you become someone else. You are no longer the same person. No longer the same people.

“That would kill our culture and our future entirely.”

Just down the river, Venture Global is going to build an $8.5 billion liquified natural gas plant and pipeline. The Governor and other state political leaders are excited about the benefits of this project. They calculate that the "250 jobs" and profits/strategic positioning to be realized by their friends in the energy industry outweigh the "risks" of protecting the land on which the facility will sit.

Those friends will never be asked to pay for the now irreparable damage their activities have caused in the Louisiana wetlands over the past century.  Those costs will continue to be borne fully by the communities they've destroyed along the way.