PROJECT NAME AND STATE: Louisiana Coastal Area, Louisiana – Ecosystem Restoration: Comprehensive Coastwide Ecosystem Restoration

AUTHORIZATION: This study is authorized through Resolutions of the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate Committees on Public Works, 19 April 1967 and 19 October 1967.

STUDY AREA: The study area is Louisiana’s coastal area from Mississippi to Texas. Louisiana parishes included in the study area are Ascension, Assumption, Calcasieu, Cameron, Iberia, Jefferson, Lafourche, Livingston, Orleans, Plaquemines, St. Bernard, St. Charles, St. James, St. John the Baptist, St. Martin, St. Mary, St. Tammany, Tangipahoa, Terrebonne, and Vermilion.

BACKGROUND: The rate of coastal land loss in Louisiana has reached catastrophic proportions. The effects of natural processes such as subsidence and storms have combined with human actions on large and small scales to produce a system on the verge of collapse.

System collapse threatens the continued productivity of Louisiana's bountiful coastal ecosystems, the economic viability of its industries and the safety of its residents. If recent loss rates continue, even taking into account current restoration efforts, by 2050 coastal Louisiana will lose more than 630,000 additional acres of coastal marshes, swamps and islands.

With the loss of acreage goes the loss of the various functions and values associated with internationally significant wetlands: commercial harvest of a national and international fishery resource; furbearer and alligator farming and harvest; recreational saltwater and freshwater fisheries; North American Central Flyway waterfowl wintering habitat; ecotourism habitats for nationally endangered and threatened species; water quality improvement; oil and gas production; petrochemical industries; strategic petroleum reserve storage sites; navigation corridors and port facilities for commerce and national defense; flood control, including hurricane storm surge buffers; and the intangible value of land settled 300 years ago and passed down through generations.

PROJECT PURPOSE: The project is to sustain a coastal ecosystem that supports and protects the environment, economy and culture of southern Louisiana and that contributes greatly to the economy and well-being of the nation by achieving the following:

1. Sustaining a coastal ecosystem with the essential functions and values of the natural ecosystem;
2. Restoring the ecosystem to the highest practical acreage of productive and diverse wetlands; and
3. Accomplishing this restoration through an integrated program that has multiple use benefits; benefits not solely for wetlands, but for all the communities, industries and resources of the coast.

PROJECT SCOPE:

1. Area: The project's boundaries are the four planning regions defined in Coast 2050 (1998). They encompass the following ecosystems:
   Region 1:  Pontchartrain Hydrologic Basin
   Region 2:  Breton, Barataria, and Mississippi River Delta hydrologic basins
   Region 3:  Terrebonne, Atchafalaya and Teche/Vermillion hydrologic basins
   Region 4:  Calcasieu/Sabine and Mermentau hydrologic basins

2. Types of Alternatives: The types of alternatives include, but are not limited to, structural and non-structural solutions which will: assure vertical accumulation to achieve sustainability of ecosystems; maintain estuarine gradients to achieve coastal habitat diversity; and maintain exchange and interface to achieve ecosystem linkages. These may be accomplished through implementation of the following project types:
   

   1. Freshwater Diversion Projects
   2. Sediment Diversion Projects
   3. Outfall Management Projects
   4. Hydrologic Restoration Projects
   5. Marsh Management Projects
   6. Shoreline Protection Projects
   7. Barrier Island Projects
   8. Dredged Material/Marsh Restoration Projects
   9. Sediment and Nutrient Trapping Projects
   10. Vegetation Planting Project