Costly and Complicated, Restoring Louisiana's Wetlands Is Increasingly Important

July 10, 2006 — -- Louisiana's vital wetlands are disappearing at an alarming rate.

About 25 square miles disappear every year -- a football field every half-hour. Last year, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita exacerbated the loss by a decade, and activists say the time for action is overdue.

"During Rita and Katrina, the coast of Louisiana lost right at about 200 square miles," said Sydney Coffee, chairman of Louisiana's Coastal Protection and Recovery Authority. "It was an urgent situation before the storms. Now you can imagine."

New Orleans relies on the intricate series of marshes, bayous and rivers to act as a buffer during hurricanes and tropical storms. The impact of these losses stretches farther than Crescent City, Calif., affecting all Americans, from what they eat to what they pay for gas.

"A third of all the natural gas or oil consumed in this country today comes through Louisiana's wetlands by tanker, barge or pipeline," Coffee said. "It's all a balance. Everything that happens on this coast affects the rest of the United States because of its location."

Eighty percent of the nation's offshore oil comes from Louisiana.

The oil, as well as natural gas, winds through a spaghettilike maze of pipelines buried throughout the massive coastal wetlands.

As these areas shrink in size, the pipelines are no longer protected from the elements, and the consequences are costly and ripple out across the country.

Louisiana and Gov. Kathleen Blanco are hoping to fund the restoration of the wetlands by creating a revenue-sharing agreement with the oil companies and the federal government.

Currently, all the money made from offshore oil leases goes to the Minerals Management Service, a division of the Department of the Interior. Blanco is trying to block future oil leases off Louisiana's coast until the state and the Coastal Habitat Restoration Project receive a percentage of billions of dollars in profits.

Coffee, who works with the governor's office, supports her approach to funding this massive restoration effort.

"To sustain the kind of 20-year effort we need to restore this coast, it's going to take money in a steady stream," Coffee said. "We can't be at the whim of Congress to either appropriate funds or not."