State officials said the controversial berm project they have pursued in the wake of the BP oil spill will be significantly smaller than originally planned.
 
The BP-funded project,  which Gov. Bobby Jindal has advocated strenuously, aims to use dredged sand to bolster miles of barrier islands along the coast in an effort to stop oil from washing ashore. But state officials said some scientists and media outlets are misrepresenting their plans for the project’s scope.
 
The original plans for the project were sweeping in scale — 19 berm segments would span more than 100 miles of Louisiana coast, shielding sensitive wetlands from oil. After considering those plans, the Army Corps of Engineers gave the state an emergency permit to build six berms spanning 14.5 miles of coast, according to Garret Graves, director of the Governor’s Office of Coastal Activities.
 
Graves said the state has constructed 8.5 miles of berms so far, and sand has been dredged from the Mississippi River and will be pumped to finish the six remaining miles of berms.
 
Once that sand has been distributed, the state will have finished the work allowed by the emergency permit. In order to expand the project to its original scope, including 13 new berms, a full-time permit from the Corps is necessary — but Graves said his agency made the decision not to pursue that permit in August, despite media reports to the contrary.
 
Graves said his office was required to submit the full proposal 30 days after submitting the emergency proposal. But while media and scientists are waiting for the Corps to approve the full permit, Graves said his office has been focused on the six berms covered under the emergency permit.
 
“We certainly recognized that, timing-wise, with the well being capped, we were going to [stay with the first six berms],” he said.
 
Graves said some scientists and media outlets have misinterpreted his department’s efforts. He specifically mentioned The Advocate, which ran a Sept. 9 article describing a letter to the Corps claiming that “Jindal also wants the Corps’ permission to build 13 other berms for a total of 101 miles.”
 
“The Advocate very much misconstrued what the EPA said,” Graves said. The letter was written by Miguel I. Flores, director of the EPA’s Water Quality Protection Division, and said, “We question the timeliness of berm construction and the ability of the berm to substantially reduce the amount of oil reaching wetlands.
 
“We made it clear [to the Corps] that the six berms were our priority,” Graves said.
 
Graves said the decision was a result of a lack of dredging capacity in navigational canals, obstacles with obtaining approval of dredging sites and other unforeseen issues like tropical storms and equipment malfunctions that slowed construction progress — not pressure from the outside scientific or political community.
 
Graves said the permitting process for full approval would likely take until around December of next year. “By that point, it would be difficult for us to get funding,” he said.
 
Graves said the decision was communicated to the Corps verbally. Attempts by his office to find e-mail or other tangible communication to that effect were unsuccessful by press time.
 
Not only do Graves’ statements seem in conflict with media reports, they conflict with coastal scientists’ perceptions of the situation.
 
Len Bahr, a former University marine sciences faculty member and blogger who has been an outspoken opponent of the berm project, said he sat in on a meeting of the Office of Coastal Activities on Wednesday — at which Graves spoke — and had no clue the state had decided not to pursue the full permit.
 
“I didn’t hear a whisper about it,” Bahr said. “As far as I could tell, they were still going for the full deal.”
 
Paul Kemp, vice president of the Audubon Society’s Gulf Coast Initiative, said the decision not to pursue the full 100-mile-plus project is news to him, as well.
 
“This is the first time I’ve heard it said publicly that they didn’t want to go all the way,” said Kemp, who has helped write several letters to the state as part of the organization’s input into the effort.
 
“It sounds to me like there might be some rewriting of history here,” he said.
 
 
 
 
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Contact Matthew Albright at [email protected]