Gulf of Mexico - Take a look at the Louisiana’s barrier islands and you will see a powerful reminder that flood protection often involves a trade off. Sure, engineering put in place decades ago does keep the river from flooding the city every spring. But at the same time, levees and floodwalls keep nature from forming new barrier islands in the Gulf of Mexico.
Offshore, work crews on a dredge mine a precious commodity - sand and dirt - the building blocks for a barrier island. The dredge is 8 miles offshore. Construction Manager Barry Richard explains that the material is piped onto the island, not far east of Grand Isle.
The project built two and a half miles of new beach.
"The way I look at it, this is protection for the rest of our state," said Richard. Barrier islands guard marsh, which guard the levees, which guard communities. The islands are the key to multiple lines of defense.
"We are moving dirt. We are building projects like this coast-wide," Richard said.
In fact, Louisiana will spend over $1 billion in the next three years on similar projects. For people and the pelicans clinging to this coveted real estate, it is but a down payment on the problem.
“If you go just a few miles north, you're running into places like empire, port sulfur,” explained Chris Macaluso with the state’s Office of Coastal Protection. “These are places where people live. They're vital parts of the oil and gas industry.”
Farther to the east lie Orphan Islands. Breton Island and the Chandeleur Chain get a less elaborate form of help. Students from Southeastern Louisiana University give nature a helping hand. They spent a recent Saturday driving fence posts, stringing wire and hanging burlap.
“It's definitely an experience to be in the middle of the gulf pretty much,” said one volunteer.
The fences the students are creating trap sand, little 'speed bumps' that will, hopefully, grow into sand dunes. Students say it is an amazing experience to be a part of because of the impact it will have on the environment.
"Unfortunately, one hurricane over one of these islands can take them out completely," said SLU Biology Professor, Dr. Gary Shaffer.
Nature always intended for these islands to move and eventually to disappear. The problem is man got in the way, and now, there is nothing to replace the islands.
“The river moves every thousand years or so, the delta builds out and it starts to erode as the river shifts course, the headlands start to erode and then they break off from the coast, and that's where the barrier islands come from in the first place,” Shaffer said.
Centuries ago, the islands were the mouth of the river. Today, the Mississippi, trapped in a straight jacket of levees, no longer builds new land.
Refuge manager Jack Bohannan says without help, the islands might vanish within 25 or 30 years. That is assuming no major hurricane wipes them off the face of the earth sooner.
Breton and the Chandeleur islands are not included in any of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ options for category five hurricane protection. The Corps deems those islands too far from land to zap a storm surge.
For any of the islands, time is critical. As the sea chews away at the coast, the cost of building beach escalates sometimes by tens of millions of dollars.
In parts of the state, the barrier islands are re-born. In other places, slivers of sand are losing their battle with the sea.
