From Clarence in Louisiana: [email protected]
This web site is my personal site and it is not affliated with the radio station.
Why the restoration of Louisiana's coastal wetlands and marshes affects every American in the USA.
If you didn't already know it, 1/3 of all of the USA oil and gas comes through Louisiana. If Louisiana decided to stop all production of oil and gas, stop all the oil refining, and closed all the chemical plants that we have here, then America would shut down and go into a severe recession like never seen before.
Here in Louisiana, we have a unique geographical problem that you may not be aware of. For thousands of years, we have been fortunate to have a very large wetland filled with marshes along our coastline. This is the largest wetland in America and it is important to each person in the USA. Why? Not because it produces seafood and wildlife and an environmental friendly environment. Sure, those things are important, but they do not affect you directly.
What makes the Louisiana coastal wetlands and marshes directly important to you is that without it, the USA would come to a complete stop and enter a severe recession.
Without the coastal wetlands, hurricanes will wipe out 1/3 of the energy production and refining in the USA. This means the country would shut down.
What makes me say this? Well, to answer that, I need to explain how our wetlands work and what the problem is and how our national government is not handling the situation.
First, let me say that the marshes slow down hurricanes and weaken them. Ever notice how a category 5 hurricane decreases to a category 4 hurricane when it hits land? Well, it is because the land slows it down and weakens it. We used to have hurricanes that hit Louisiana and cause minimal damage, but now, the same strenght of hurricanes cause major damage. That is because we don't have the marshes that we had even 10 years ago. In addition to weakening the hurricane, the marshes also reduce the tidal wave surge when a hurricane first hits our coastline.
So, why is our coastal wetlands and marshes disappearing at an alarming rate?
First, the background on how the marshes were built originally. Our marshes have built up over thousands of years from the Mississippi river depositing sediment along our coast. Prior to the US building levees, the river would change course every 200 years. This caused sediment to build up throughout the various areas of the Louisiana coast. If you look at Louisiana on a map, you will notice that the state is shaped like a boot. At the corner where the top of the boot meets the bottom of the boot (near Alexandria, La) there is a place where the Mississippi River would normally shift to a different path. Thus, for 200 years, the Mississippi would deposit sediment in the southeast part of the state. Then the river would shift and go down the Atchafalaya basin and deposit sediment in the southwest part of the state.
Next, the changes that the federal government made in the past century. Over time, a manmade levee was built and added on over the years. As a result, the river no longer changes course every 200 years. Thus, the sediment is no longer deposited in the Southwestern part of the state. All the river water went down the current path of the river. But, with all of the concrete and draining of water from farms and areas north of Louisiana, we had more and more water to empty into the Mississippi River. The river kept growing lengthwise until the end of the river was so far out in the marshes that it approached the continental shelf dropoff. This gets a little complicated, but basically Louisiana's coast is kind of like a beach. It is shallow (from a few feet to about a mile deep. Then, when it hits the continental shelf dropoff, it is incredibly deep. So deep in fact, that all of the Mississippi sediment drops off the end and does no building up of land and marshes.
Ok, so now we no longer are getting any new marshes built. But what about the existing marshes?
The existing marshes are disappearing at an alarming rate. In fact, we are losing marsh at about the rate of the 20-30 square miles each and every year. This is the size of Manhatten that we lose every year. Why?
First, natural processes are at work. Waves erode the marsh and we have no sediment depositing to rebuild it.
Second, the oil drilling and oil line transportation is devasting us. For each oil well drilled, they dug a canal through the marshes about 20 feet wide to hold the pipeline that connected the oil rig to the main oil line. There are also many canals dug to hold pipelines that transport oil from offshore tankers arriving from the Middle East. Each day the tide comes in and goes out sometimes as much as several feet of water. It used to be that the water moved slowly through the marshes. The water would zig-zag through the marshes and over the marsh grass. This would slow it down and give sediment a chance to deposit and keep the marsh alive with grass. Then, when the canals were dug, the water had a direct line path from inland to offshore. The water zipped through so fast that the edges of the canal eroded at an alarming rate. I personally witnessed the effects of one of these canals that was near our camp along the coast. About 10 years ago, that canal was 20 feet wide. Guess how wide it is now - 3 miles wide of open water. This is happening at all of the many oil pipeline canals. These canals are not isolated. There are canals about a mile apart on a lot of the coastline.
Third, there is a another process that is causing our coastal wetlands to disappear. That is, the sinking effect from offshore drilling. After drilling has been going on for about 50 or so years, you will find that when oil is pumped out of the ground below the sea that the bottom of the sea floor sinks to take up the missing space. Thus, the marsh floor sinks so much that it is too deep for the marsh gras to grow and the erosion speeds up. Also, since the bottom of the wetland sunk, the tidal surge associated with hurricanes comes through deep water instead of shallow water before it hits land. This is like providing fuel to a tidal surge. Thus, instead of a 10 foot tidal surge with sufficient marshlands, you can expect a 20 foot storm surge without those marshlands. That extra 10 feet of water that is surging to the levees around New Orleans is enough to put it over the levees. Had we had the marsh to reduce the storm surge, many times the water will not break over the levees.
So, what needs to be done now? Well, for decades Louisiana has been trying to convince the federal government to fully fund the restoration of our coastal wetlands and marshes. Basically, this would be a very expensive project that only the federal government could provide. The way that it would work is for the government to cut breaks in the Mississippi river levee at key points. The water would divert out of the river laterally into the surrounding marshes. This would allow sediment to build up and marshes would be created. Remember that if we don't divert the water out of the levee, then the water (and sediment) would follow the river to the end of the river and fall off the edge of the continental shelf which would provide no sediment buildup.
Isn't this too expensive to do? 10 Billion dollars over 10 years. Well, look at it this way. Currently, each year, the oil companies pay $ 1 billion dollars in tax dollars to the federal government for rights to drill in the area of the coast that is more than 3 miles from the land. Does Louisiana get any of the $ 1 billion dollars per year of these taxes that are generated? NO! All of the money goes to the federal government. If our government would take this existing tax and direct it to rebuild Louisiana's coastline, that would solve the problem. But Bush and the US Senate and the US House does not think that oil revenue should solve problems created by the oil industry.
The federal government has the opinion that our disappearing wetlands is not worth saving. Well, have you seen the price of gas lately. ALL of the USA is affected by the refusal to rebuild our coastal wetlands. Without marshes, you have no protection from hurricanes. Without protection from hurricanes, oil and gas production and refining shut down. Without 1/3 of the nations energy resources that Louisiana provides, you lose. Gas prices go up, and the nation goes into a serious recession and the entires USA grinds to a halt. What if all of the numerous chemical plants in Louisiana shut down? In case you don't know, they don't call us chemical (cancer) alley for nothing. Are you willing to lose your job due to a national shutdown and recession?
The purpose of this page is to affect long term policy changes so that hurricanes do not wipe us out in the future. We will have hurricanes the rest of this season, next year and many years to come. However, if Bush and the congress is pressured now by us as much as possible, perhaps he will change his mind and decide to fund coastal restoration. Hurricanes cause much more damage than they did even 10 years ago because we have no more buffer. Now is the time to convince Bush to fully fund coastal restoration. If we wait to next year to put the pressure on bush and the congress, it will be too late because the nation will have forgotten about us and moved on to the latest disaster. So, now is the correct time to speak out against bush's policies. This is not the only hurricane we will deal with. Unless we pressure bush to change his policies on energy efficiency, renewable energy resources, coastal erosion, National Guard being used overseas, etc then, we are going to have many more disasters to deal with. It is up to each and every one of us to speak up and demand that we need to change our national policy now. Not after the disaster is over, but NOW!
This problem is not republican or democrat, conservative or liberal. It is about federal policy that can be changed in the future to save lives.
This is how you can help with Louisiana's Hurricane Katrina disaster.
Read the letter that I wrote below and then do the following: Please contact your US House Representative, US Senate Representative, and President Bush and ask them to do the following:
1) Fully fund the rebuilding of Louisiana.
2) Fully fund the restoration of Louisiana's coastal zone so that we have a buffer between hurricanes and us.
3) Share the 3+ mile offshore coastal tax revenues with Louisiana. The oil produced 3 miles off of our coast generates 1 billion dollars a year in severance taxes for our national government and Bush refuses to share these funds with Louisiana. We get 0 % of the offshore oil revenues produced in the 3+ mile zone.
4) Demand that the FEMA and the Office of Homeland Security get organized for future disasters.
5) Demand that energy conservation and the use of renewable environmentally friendly energy resourses take priority over our reliance on Mideast oil.
6) Demand that Bush quits using our National Guard to fight wars overseas. Whether you agree with the war or not, the issue is that overseas wars should be fought with active duty regular service military, not the National Guard. The whole purpose of the "National" Guard is to be here on US soil when we have disasters inside the US. Our governors can not call out the full National Guard in disasters because 1/3 of our National Guard is in Iraq.
7) You as an individual can help by donating money to help us in Louisiana. I recommend the Baton Rouge Area Foundation www.braf.org
Baton Rouge is the main staging area for providing relief to New Orleans. This particular organization has an exceptional reputation as an efficient and well run organization and is a favorite of locals.
Hurricane Katrina updated: 09/02/05
Bush, Shame on You !
This is an open letter from Louisiana to President Bush and the USA.
Bush, hurricane Katrina devasted us here in Louisiana. You are our President and we needed you.
But, your performance has been dismal. You refused to fully fund our coastal wetlands
restoration so we now have no buffer zone between us and the hurricanes. You cut the funding
for the New Orleans levee maintenance and our levees failed. We needed our national guard
soldiers and they are in Iraq. We needed buses to evacuate and you took 4 days to provide them.
We needed leadership from FEMA and the Office of Homeland Security and you provided incompetent
people to lead these agencies. These offices are supposed to know what is going on. Four days
after the Hurricane, they did not even know that there were thousands of refugees in the
Convention Center. They had no clue about the desperate situation we are in.
Bush, you fail to
realize the contributions that our state has made to the nation for many decades even though
30 % of our nation's oil and gas comes through Louisiana. The oil produced 3 miles off of our
coast generates 1 billion dollars a year in severance taxes for our national government and you
refuse to share these funds with Louisiana. We get 0 % of the offshore oil revenues produced in
the 3+ mile zone.
We are tired of the rest of the nation depending on us to provide energy
without appreciating our worth. You did nothing to encourage energy conservation and the use of
solar, wind and renewable resources that are environmentally friendly. As a result, gas prices
are going through the roof and we are hopelessly tied to the Mideastern oil and we will continue
to have wars in that region as long as we need their oil. We are spending billions on
rebuilding Iraq, yet in Congress, your House of Representative's leader, Dennis Hastert said
this week that we should not rebuild New Orleans.
It has been 4 years since 9/11 and you
have not figured out a way to improve communications among our frontline first responders in
disaster areas! During 9/11, cell phones did not work. Even I can figure out that we could have
used the Sirius and XM Satellites to tie together radio communication for our frontline first
responders. You knew that a category 5 hurricane was coming days before the event and you did
nothing to prepare for it.
Shame on you Bush! Either lead or get out the way! It is up to each
of you to write your US Senators and US House Representatives and President Bush to change his
policies. This is not the last hurricane that we will have and Bush needs to fully fund our
coastal wetlands and marshes or this disaster will repeat itself.
This problem is not republican or democrat, conservative or liberal. It is about federal policy
that can be changed in the future to save lives.
Sincerely, Clarence in Louisiana
[email protected]
I have written a page on why the restoration of Louisiana's coastal wetlands and
marshes affects every American in the USA. Read about it. Continue reading
here.
If you would like to donate $ to help us in Louisiana, I recommend the Baton Rouge Area
Foundation www.braf.org
Baton Rouge is the main staging area for providing relief to New Orleans. This particular
organization has an exceptional reputation as an efficient and well run organization and is a
favorite of locals.
For more information about Louisiana coastal wetlands and marshes, see the web site on
America's Wetland in Louisiana
www.americaswetland.com
