Saving Seafood

Economist says coastal restoration projects would pump billions into southeast Louisiana’s economy

October 17, 2019 — Two projects planned by the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority will have a multibillion-dollar economic impact on southeast Louisiana, according to a report presented to the CPRA board Wednesday.

The CPRA expects to spend $1.8 billion over seven years on two controversial diversion projects that would redirect land-building sediment from the Mississippi River to Barataria Bay and Breton Bay.

“That’s a non-trivial sum of money, obviously,” said Loren Scott, an economist who studied the potential economic impact for the Restore the Mississippi Delta Campaign and The Environmental Defense Fund.

In the four-parish region that includes Plaquemines, St. Bernard, Orleans and Jefferson parishes, sales at businesses would increase by more than $3.1 billion while household earnings would increase more than $809 million, according to Scott’s projections.

Read the full story at KPVI

LOUISIANA: Urgency in rebuilding coastal wetlands stressed in master plan discussion

October 25th, 2016 — Louisiana’s senior coastal official on Monday (Oct. 24) called the upcoming approval of the 2017 rewrite of the state’s master plan for coastal restoration and storm surge protection “the issue of a lifetime” because of the urgency surrounding the need to begin building major restoration projects.

“The coastal crisis will affect every aspect of the economy and every constituency, and yet this plan is not political or devised to give something to every interest,” Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority Chairman Johnny Bradberry told dozens of participants in a roundtable on the plan sponsored by CPRA and the America’s WETLAND Foundation. “Instead it is a plan for our collective future and for the common interest. The stakes are extremely high.”

“Everyone wants their needs met immediately, and with so much money on the table, many have come to this table for a piece of the action,” Bradberry said.
“But the governor and I are truly dedicated to keeping this money safe and using it for its intended purposes as defined by the master plan. We will fight to make sure that the coastal trust fund is not raided, swept, redirected, co-opted or compromised in any way.”

Sitting around a circular set of tables in the Lod Cook Convention Center at Louisiana State University were key scientists who have assisted in writing the still-incomplete master plan rewrite, along with state legislators and representatives of many of the interest groups that Bradberry referred to in his introductory remarks.

Read the full story at The New Orleans Times-Picayune