La Governor outlines needed coastal restoration projects

Gov. Jindal lists $533 million in projects for BP to finance after Gulf oil spill

 By Mark Schleifstein, The Times-Picayune 

Gov. Bobby Jindal on Monday unveiled a $533 million list of projects the state wants BP to finance out of the $1 billion the company has promised as an advance payment for restoration of damages to natural resources caused by last year's massive oil spill.

View full sizeGerald Herbert, The Associated PressGov. Bobby Jindal speaks with other local and state officials at a news conference Monday announcing plans for restoring the state's coastal areas, fisheries and oyster seed grounds from the devastating effects of the BP oil spill. To his right is Lafourche Parish President Charlotte Randolph and Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser.

"BP talked about making it right," Jindal said at a news conference at the Port of New Orleans headquarters, surrounded by coastal parish leaders and state legislators. "This is the next step they can take to help us to restore our coast and truly show they are serious and they are committed about making it right and beginning to restore some of the damage along our coast."

Included in what Jindal dubbed the "Louisiana Plan" are projects that would rebuild or improve barrier islands and eroded shorelines, build breakwaters to protect existing shoreline, restore wetlands, and create or restore ridges and land bridges.

The money available to build the projects is still to be determined. The $1 billion advance payment agreement unveiled in April calls for the five coastal states and two federal agencies -- the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Interior Department -- to serve as natural resource trustees under the Oil Pollution Act of 1990. Each of those seven entities would be guaranteed $100 million. Another $300 million would be reserved for the two federal agencies to build projects chosen from those proposed by the five states.

"We expect to receive a fair share -- a disproportionate share -- of those dollars, based on the amount of damage that happened to our coast," Jindal said. He cited federal statistics that he said showed coastal Louisiana had 92 percent of the heavily and moderately oiled shoreline, and that most injured, oiled and dead birds, mammals, fish and other wildlife were found off the state's coast.

"The bottom line is by any measure, whether you look at miles of shoreline, the amount of oil or you look at the species that are impacted, Louisiana has received the brunt of the impact of the damage caused by this oil spill," he said.

Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority Chairman Garret Graves, who acts as the state's trustee in the federal Natural Resource Damage Assessment Process, will present the list of projects next week to a committee of trustees representing the coastal states and federal agencies. The list must be approved by that body, and then each project and its cost must be approved by BP.

Atop Jindal's list is the state's earlier request that BP provide $15 million to rebuild the state's oyster industry, decimated when the governor approved a plan to open freshwater diversions along the Mississippi River in an attempt to keep oil out of fragile wetland communities.

The oyster project includes spending $12 million to place cultch material on 855 acres of public oyster seed grounds in parts of Mississippi Sound that are in St. Bernard Parish; Lakes Fortuna and Machias in St. Bernard; Hackberry Bay in Jefferson and Lafourche parishes; Lake Chien and Sister Lake in Terrebonne Parish; and Calcasieu Lake in Cameron Parish.

Another $3 million would be spent on oyster hatchery improvements at Grand Isle.

Mike Voisin, owner of Motivatit Seafood and a member of the Governor's Oyster Advisory Committee, joked that the oyster improvements are especially important in light of the state's loss of a congressional seat due to a population decline measured by the 2010 Census.

"Well, we lost a congressman because we are not eating enough oysters," Voison said. "This plan will enable us to have over 20 congressional districts in only five to 10 years."

The proposal also repeats a request for $48 million to develop a Louisiana Marine Fisheries Enhancement and Science Center that would pay for hatcheries and research labs at three coast locations, a project also requested of BP after the spill.

But most of the money would be spent on "shovel-ready" projects to restore critical habitat, including rapidly eroding barrier islands and beaches, wetlands, and coastal ridges and land bridges. All of those projects had been under development through a variety of federal or state coastal restoration programs.

Louisiana developed its list during a fast-track program that solicited more than 350 proposals representing $15 billion in projects from the public, parishes and state agencies. Other states are still holding hearings to request projects that they also will submit for funding.

Two of the projects would provide money to fast-track construction of the Barataria Basin Barrier Shoreline restoration project.

The Caminada Headland project, $75 million, would begin construction of a 7-foot-high sand dune using material dredged from the Ship Shoal sand deposit in the Gulf of Mexico about 40 miles southwest of the project. The corps has estimated the full cost of that project, including restoration of wetlands on the shore side of dunes, to be $220 million.

Shell Island, $110 million, calls for construction of a barrier island between the Empire Waterway and Grand Bayou Pass. The corps has estimated the full cost of this part of the Barataria project to be $200 million.

Other projects proposed by the state include:

• West Grand Terre Island Restoration, $9 million, would restore about 120 acres on the southwest Gulf side of the island using sediment pumped from an offshore source.
• West Grand Terre Island Stabilization, $3 million, would use rock armoring along 11,000 feet of the shoreline to reduce erosion.
• Grand Isle Bay Side Segmented Breakwater, $3.3 million, would include construction of six 300-foot breakwaters, about 1.5 miles long, on the back bay side of the island, where other breakwater structures already have been built to protect residential and commercial development.
• Chenier Ronquille Barrier Island Restoration, $44 million, just west of the Shell Island project, would rebuild 127 acres of beach and dune and 259 acres of marsh.
• Biloxi Marsh Shoreline Protection, $45 million, would create a 6.5 mile to 7.5 mile breakwater structure to protect wetlands along the southeast shoreline of Lake Borgne.
• Lake Hermitage Marsh Creation, $13.9 million, would add 97.5 acres of new marsh to an earlier restoration project in Plaquemines Parish that was built with federal money.
• Caillou Lake Land Bridge, $71 million, would rebuild or protect 1,600 acres of salt marsh about 38 miles southeast of Morgan City, $71 million.
• Grand Liard Marsh and Ridge Restoration, $31 million, would rebuild 18,000 feet of ridge, and create 328 acres and restore 140 acres of marsh, south of Triumph in Plaquemines Parish, $31 million.
• Chandeleur Islands Restoration, $65 million. The state would work with the Interior Department and Mississippi to design a restoration plan for the hurricane-damaged islands, which are in Plaquemines and St. Bernard parishes.

Jindal said he has asked the state's trustee team to begin work on a second list of projects, including several that would be outside Louisiana, that could be financed during later BP damage assessment payments.

Those would include projects to restore segments of Lake Pontchartrain that became oiled during the spill.

It also would include the construction of wetland buffers along rivers and streams in Iowa and other Midwest states to capture phosphates and nitrogen from fertilizer that flow down the Mississippi River to Louisiana coastal waters, feeding low-oxygen dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico. The areas are formed when the nutrients cause algae blooms, the algae dies and sinks to the bottom of the Gulf, decomposing and using up oxygen.

Jindal said the state also would work with Mississippi to remove dams to restore the flow of freshwater to the Mississippi Sound, which would help that state's oyster beds.

The state also would propose projects that would expand on its Coastal Forest Initiative, financed with state surplus dollars, to rebuild cypress and tupelo forests in wetland areas that would act as storm surge buffers.

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Mark Schleifstein can be reached at mschleifstein@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3327.

© 2011 NOLA.com. All rights reserved.

BP wants to resume deep-water drilling

According to the British newspaper Financial Times, BP could return to Gulf drilling as early as July. The Sunday Times, another British newspaper, also reported the news.

However, a spokeswoman for the U.S. government agency that oversees drilling denied that the government had reached any agreement with the British oil giant and said no permits have been issued to the company. The New York Times reported that while BP is in negotiations to return to the Gulf in exchange for stricter government oversight, no deal has been reached.

The news comes nearly two weeks before the one-year anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon explosion and the subsequent spill of crude oil that fouled Gulf coast beaches and upended the lives and the economies of residents who depended on the Gulf for their livelihoods.

The explosion and fire killed 11 workers on the rig.

In returning to the Gulf, BP will be limited to drilling at 10 existing wells that were under way before the explosion, according to reports.

The Sunday Times said BP will not be permitted to drill exploration wells, according to its agreement with the government.

BP has agreed to allow regulators 24-hour access to all of its Gulf sites, the newspapers reported.

Melissa Schwartz, spokesperson for Michael Bromwich, the director of the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, denied that any deal had been reached between the U.S. government and BP.

"There is no such deal," she said in an email to reporters.

Mama say: 'BP, clean up yo' mess!'

Women of Storm take fight to D.C. 

Use BP fines to help Gulf region, they say 

By Jonathan Tilove, Times-Picayune

WASHINGTON -- The weather was bright and brisk, and the spirits high, as about 140 Gulf Coast Women of the Storm rallied, and lobbied Tuesday on Capitol Hill for Congress to direct 80 percent of any penalty money from the BP oil spill to restore the coast the spill despoiled. 

"It is often said a rising tide lifts all boats," Women of the Storm founder Anne Milling said. "If Congress takes the common-sense step of dedicating BP fines to the Gulf region, all America will benefit for generations to come from a healthy Gulf that supports domestic energy, ship-going, seafood, ecology, recreation and culture. 

It is not time to be short-sighted." Or, as Lucy Buffett, sister of singer Jimmy Buffett and a popular restaurateur in Gulf Shores, Ala., put it, I'm not really political, but this is a no-brainer for me. This is Manners 101:

If you mess something up, you clean it up." 

The Women of the Storm -- expanded, post-spill, to include women from all five Gulf States -- gathered on a long stretch of lawn on the Senate side of the Capitol, bearing their trademark blue umbrellas, a reminder of the blue tarps that covered so many roofless homes in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. 

They were joined by EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, who grew up in the Upper 9th Ward, and was named by the Obama administration to head the Gulf Coast Ecosystem Restoration Task Force, and Donald Boesch, a New Orleans native and environmental scientist, who served on the National Oil Spill Commission named by the president. 

The commission and the administration have backed efforts to dedicate most of the penalty money under the Clean Water Act to restoring the Gulf Coast to a condition better than existed before last year's spill. 

The women also were joined by Rep. Steve Scalise, R-Jefferson, who has filed legislation in the House to accomplish that, and Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., who will be refiling her own companion legislation in the Senate. 

"I have no doubt that we will be successful, with your determination and your stormy personalities," Landrieu told the Women of the Storm. "It is only proper that the Gulf Coast states receive the lion's share of the fines BP will have to pay as a result of this disaster, and it is imperative that we work together without delay to move this legislation forward," Scalise said. 

"As we say in my house, when mama ain't happy, nobody's happy," said Mary Matalin, the Republican strategist, and wife of Democratic strategist, James Carville. "These women are not happy, and they represent a region, but this isn't a no-brainer for me. This is Manners 101 -- you mess something up, you clean it up."

The Women of the Storm -- expanded, post-spill, to include women from all five Gulf States -- gathered on a long stretch of lawn on the Senate side of the Capitol, bearing their trademark blue umbrellas, a reminder of the blue tarps that covered so many roofless homes in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

With the help of their politically connected friends, the Women of the Storm arranged meetings with some of the most influential members of Congress. Milling's day included meetings with Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., who chairs the Environment and Public Works Committee, House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., a long-time ally. At the Pelosi meeting, Milling was joined by Nancy Marsiglia, Peggy Laborde and Rita Benson LeBlanc.

The women, who left New Orleans by daybreak, headed home by nightfall, feeling they had made progress and also better understood the obstacles that remain.

"We feel as though maybe we moved the ball a few yards down the field," Milling said. 

But, before boarding their charter plane home, Milling said that her canvassing of the other women revealed a common thread in what they were hearing from members of Congress during their day of lobbying: Gulf Coast lawmakers must be united around a piece of legislation for it to have antheir day of lobbying: Gulf Coast lawmakers must be united around a piece of legislation for it to have any chance of success.

"We repeatedly heard this from various congressmen and senators. The Gulf Coast delegation has got to come together and nothing can move until that happens," Milling said. "Like Sen. Boxer said to us, she's ready to go and to move the bill, but we've got to get the whole Gulf Coast on board." 

. . . . . . . 

Jonathan Tilove can be reached at jtilove@timespicayune.com or 202.857.5125. 

 

The Gulf is important to us all

I've been reading about the long-term environmental effects of the BP spill. Y'all realize we're all affected by this disaster, right? You like shrimp in yo' gumbo? Enjoy a dozen raw oysters? I read somewhere they found oil in crabs. So far, no known effects on the fish because they could swim away, but nobody knows for sure.

Let's not forget the marshes and the impact of the oil floating up against the grasses. Marshes slow the speed of hurricanes. Scientists are studying the bird population, in particular, the brown pelican, which had just come off the endangered species list.

Every year, the average amount of coastal land lost in Louisiana is four times the blast area of the Hiroshima bomb, said Alexander Kolker, an adjunct professor and research scientist at Tulane University. Ninety percent of U.S. coastal wetland loss has been in Louisiana, home of fisheries and thousands of migrating birds.

Beyond the immediate BP oil disaster, the long-term history of impact to Louisiana’s coastal zone is “turning out to be the more important story,” said Kolker, who teaches Earth and Environmental Sciences. This history includes previous oil spills, natural hydrocarbon seeps and a landscape that loses nearly 24 square miles of land every year.

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