Environmental groups offer new plan to save LA coast

When the state released its proposed master plan for flood protection and coastal restoration earlier this year, scathing comments at a series of public meetings forced officials to rewrite large sections of the plan and redraw maps.

Still, that failed to satisfy representatives of the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation and the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana. In another example of intensified public activism since the flood, the two environmental groups went far beyond mere objections and put together a coalition of scientists and engineers to draft an entirely separate plan, one based on a comprehensive "multiple lines of defense" strategy.

The new report provides uncommonly broad and detailed recommendations for building levees; restoring wetlands, historic ridges and barrier islands; changing or protecting evacuation routes; and improving building codes and zoning regulations to reduce the risk of flooding from major hurricanes.


"The more we thought about what we wanted to say, the more we realized we needed more detail, a more in-depth discussion," said Mark Ford, executive director of the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana.

The report is written by the Multiple Lines of Defense Assessment Team, which is led by scientists and engineers who are members of the lake foundation and the coalition. Its strategy has roots in proposals by John Lopez, the lake foundation's science director and the study's lead author, which date to before Hurricane Katrina.

The alternate plan differs from the state's plan in the following key ways:

--Fewer levees that would block off a smaller area of wetlands;

--Wetlands would be restored to the way they looked more than 80 years ago.

The environmental groups believe the state plan relies too much on levees that they say could exacerbate coastal erosion by cutting off marshes from the freshwater and sediment that sustains them.

The state had rushed to complete its own plan, getting it approved by the state Legislature in March. That's because the state hoped its plan -- which depends largely on federal financing -- would influence the more critical plan being submitted to Congress by the Army Corps of Engineers that, if approved, ultimately would guide the long-term rebuilding of the state's flood protection system.

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