Over the course of the past century, a new Louisiana has taken shape, one that has lost nearly 2,000 square miles in ninety years.
Without the Mighty Mississippi strengthening its delta, Louisiana marshes have crumbled under the pressure of hurri- canes, saltwater intrusion, withering barrier islands, nutrient pollution and oil canals.
As a football field of marsh drifts into the Gulf of Mexico every hour, Louisianans are forced to root themselves in a sobering reality: the boot is losing its sole.
“Louisianans have their own very per- sonal reasons for interest in coastal and environmental sciences,” said Dr. Richard Shaw, Associate Dean of the LSU School of The Coast and Environment.
“For centuries, Louisiana’s geography and abundance of natural resources and wildlife have bound lives and livelihoods inextricably to the coastal environment,” Shaw said.
The nation’s largest area of coastal wetlands is not something Louisianans can afford to lose—yet money and politics play a role in sunken livelihoods.
Dirty Politics
Though cementing the Mississippi into place with levees largely created this environmental issue, systems within and without the state reinforce these structures. The Army Corps of Engineers built the modern levee system after the Great Flood of 1927, and the expansion of oil and natural gas industries have encroached on the fragile deltaic plain.
Ultimately, energy interests override environment ones, as Governor Jindal signed a bill to prohibit the non-partisan SLFPA-E from suing 97 energy companies for damaging Louisiana’s coast. The coast that took 6,000 years to form has been “brought to the brink of destruction in the course of a single human lifetime,” SLF- PA-E notes in its lawsuit.
Senate Bill 469 was designed to “stop frivolous lawsuits,” according to Jindal. In addition to “reducing unnecessary claims that burden businesses so that we can bring even more jobs to our state,” the bill will “send future recovered dollars from CZMA litigation to coastal projects, allowing us to ensure Louisiana coastal lands are preserved and that our communities are protected.”
According to its lawsuit, the non-par- tisan Levee Board, charged with “operating the flood protection system that guards millions of people and billions of dollars’ worth of property in south Louisiana from destructive floodwaters” filed the myriad of lawsuits on the grounds that “hundreds of thousands of acres of the coastal lands that once protected South Louisiana are now gone as a result of oil and gas indus- try activities,” supported by United States Geographical Survey data.
The state’s flagship university has an entire school dedicated to preserving and rebuilding the Louisiana coast—and sub- stantial grants to boot.
Gaining Ground
Environmentalists grapple with advo- cating for an environment that companies are using to build unsustainable fortunes.
This is why the School of Coast and Environment urges students to strengthen their understanding of the precarious bal- ances struck between the environment and the economy to preserve a healthy, environ- mentally sustainable lifestyle into the 21st century, according to Dr. Shaw.
LSU SC&E students are encouraged to see the coast from various angles, an approach that invariably contributes to their comprehensive research and proposed solutions.
The SC&E consists of the Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences and the Department of Environmental Sciences.
Classes range in focus from the nature of
The school is able to achieve its mis- sion by carrying out grant work. Since 2008, the school has received approximately $69 million in extramural grant research. The school received over $15 million in 2010 alone due to the aftermath of the BP Deep- water Horizon oil spill.
Grants are awarded to various areas to support SC&E’s own multidimensional ap- proach to coastal research. They allow the school to improve their own educational methods. A $50,000 Keck Foundation grant supports SC&E faculty in developing a curriculum to innovate new solutions to Louisiana’s coastal challenges.
Grants also support SC&E in creative projects to communicate coastal issues to the public. The LSU Coastal Sustainability Studio (CSS), a joint project between the College of Art and Design, the College of Engineering and the School of the Coast and Environment, garnered $200,000 from the Kresge Foundation to address city planning and land use through the Loui- siana Coastal Protection and Restoration
Authority (CPRA).
The program has allocated about
$100,000 to “contribute to adaptive, resil- ient and sustainable human communities in the dynamic Louisiana coastal landscape.”
Digging Deep For Answers
Johnathan Canales is a part of this in- terdisciplinary effort to rebuild the coast.
The a third-year architecture graduate student is working with CSS to design a CPRA exhibit at The Water Institute in downtown Baton Rouge. Fellows, super- vising professors, graduate students and undergraduate students work together to develop the exhibit, a process that is ex- pected to last 18 to 24 months.
When viewers enter the exhibit, they see the concept of the “working coast.” This includes natural deltaic processes as well as how humans affect these processes, all while demonstrating the grave importance of these processes in preserving the coast.
Once the viewer understand how the current coastal environment works, the factors contributing to coastal loss—subsid- ence, sea level rise, oil canals—are explained, drawing correlations as to how these occur- rences create land loss.
Yet the viewer’s hopes should not be dashed—CPRA is “trying to provide a promise of an optimistic future,” said Cana- les. After educating the viewer on what the problems are, CPRA provides their meth- ods and research in building back our coast. The space is filled with informational kiosks, one for each CPRA project.
Canales thinks the interdisciplinary and academic aspect is what makes the pro- gram so innovative.
“The university is an ideal workplace for progressive ideas,” he said.
CPRA’s efforts are meant to show people that humans are capable of hurting or helping the coast. “Human intervention has worked to ruin the coast, but it can also aid in its restoration,” Canales said.
Room 212 in the LSU Design Building is the CSS workspace as well as a showcase for the work the studio is producing. An “asset to any student on campus,” Canales encourages students to pop in to see what the group is doing.
Building A Solid Future
LSU students supported by these grants understand the immediacy subsid- ence calls for—and the importance of finan- cial support.
“People think the natural environment is much larger than it is, and they have no clue how quickly it’s disappearing,” said Matthew Repp, a senior in Natural Re- source Ecology and Management.
Repp believes supporting LSU stu- dents through grants empowers those who know how to solve this issue. “The only way people can make a difference is to support people who have the ability to,” Repp said.
“In other words, give scientists the ability to make the changes we know we need to make. Funding is the best way.”
Louisiana’s foot may be half in its watery grave, but LSU SC&E research keeps hope for a renewed coast afloat.
