by Kira Lerner and Alice Ollstein
Flying due south from the shores of Lake
Pontchartrain, the Louisiana coast looks at first just as it did decades
ago, with thick, marshy wetlands broken only by freshwater lakes and
streams. Within minutes, however, that landscape gives way to a
different scene: tufts of grass clinging to tiny slivers of land, the
wild curves of the remaining patches broken by thousands of
razor-straight lines where oil and gas companies have laid pipelines and
dredged canals to give their boats easier access to the rigs and wells
that dot the coastline. Just below the water, the murky outline of
recently submerged land is visible from 1,000 feet in the air.Keep flying south and a glimpse of the future of the coast emerges - open water as far as the eye can see.
"When you fly over that coastal area, you're going to see how it is today. You're not going to see how it was. You're not going to see how it's going to be," said Steve Estopinal, a career land surveyor and the president of the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority. "But if you want to think about how it's going to be, just fly a little further out into the Gulf of Mexico and you'll get a good idea."
Many of wetlands where Louisianans once lived are now underwater.
Many of wetlands where Louisianans once lived are now underwater.
This swift erosion poses a very serious threat to the coastal communities who are watching their land crumble away beneath them at the fastest rate in the world: the state's shoreline is losing a football field-sized area of land every hour. Furthermore, as the ocean eats away at the remaining wetlands, a natural process unnaturally sped up by oil and gas extraction, levee construction, and sea level rise, the marshes are unable to absorb storms that regularly batter the coastline. Without that natural buffer, strengthened hurricanes are making landfall, devastating both urban and rural areas that previously rode out storms mostly unharmed.
"It's the greatest ongoing environmental disaster in the country, maybe even in the world," Democratic strategist and Louisiana native James Carville said. "It's a really grave problem."
A 2006 study by the U.S, Geological Survey and Gas Research Institute concluded that 36 percent of the wetland loss was directly caused by the oil and gas companies' activity. As the state and its people wrestle with the impacts of this grave problem, an unprecedented court case is pitting the independent state agency responsible for protecting Louisianians from floods against the dozens of fossil fuel companies whose decades of largely unchecked extraction activities have put the state's vital wetland ecosystem on life support.
"When you fly over that coastal area, you're going to see how it is today. You're not going to see how it was. You're not going to see how it's going to be," said Steve Estopinal, a career land surveyor and the president of the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority. "But if you want to think about how it's going to be, just fly a little further out into the Gulf of Mexico and you'll get a good idea."
Many of wetlands where Louisianans once lived are now underwater.
Many of wetlands where Louisianans once lived are now underwater.
This swift erosion poses a very serious threat to the coastal communities who are watching their land crumble away beneath them at the fastest rate in the world: the state's shoreline is losing a football field-sized area of land every hour. Furthermore, as the ocean eats away at the remaining wetlands, a natural process unnaturally sped up by oil and gas extraction, levee construction, and sea level rise, the marshes are unable to absorb storms that regularly batter the coastline. Without that natural buffer, strengthened hurricanes are making landfall, devastating both urban and rural areas that previously rode out storms mostly unharmed.
"It's the greatest ongoing environmental disaster in the country, maybe even in the world," Democratic strategist and Louisiana native James Carville said. "It's a really grave problem."
A 2006 study by the U.S, Geological Survey and Gas Research Institute concluded that 36 percent of the wetland loss was directly caused by the oil and gas companies' activity. As the state and its people wrestle with the impacts of this grave problem, an unprecedented court case is pitting the independent state agency responsible for protecting Louisianians from floods against the dozens of fossil fuel companies whose decades of largely unchecked extraction activities have put the state's vital wetland ecosystem on life support.
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