Louisiana’s coast is home to nearly two million people, provides vital habitat for wildlife and birds, and contributes tens of billions of dollars to the national economy every year. The Mississippi River Delta is an economic engine for the state as well as the nation that depends on it for shipping, chemicals, energy, and seafood.
Land loss crisis
But coastal Louisiana is facing a land loss crisis. Since the 1930s, Louisiana has lost nearly 1,900 square miles of land, or an area the size of the state of Delaware. Every hour, a football field of land disappears into open water.
Leveeing of the Mississippi River in the early 20th century severed the tie between the river and its surrounding wetlands, cutting off the Mississippi River Delta from its life-giving river and the sediment
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Five years later, the BP oil disaster served another blow to an already degraded system.
The Gulf Coast is still recovering from the effects of the oil spill, and we may not know the full impacts to the ecosystem for decades to come. Urgent, large-scale restoration is needed to restore Louisiana’s vanishing coast – to help buffer and protect the region from future storms and disasters.
Following the oil disaster, in 2012, Congress passed the Restore Act, legislation that ensures 80 percent of the Clean Water Act penalties BP and other parties pay as a result of the spill are dedicated to Gulf Coast restoration.
In 2015, BP agreed to pay more than $20 billion to settle remaining federal and state civil suits against the company for its role in the oil disaster - the largest environmental settlement in U.S. history. Under the agreement, Louisiana is poised to receive nearly $8 billion – or about half a billion dollars per year for the next 15 years – for coastal restoration and