Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion Project canceled

PLAQUEMINES PARISH, La. (WGNO) — The Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion Project was officially canceled on July 17 in an announcement by the Louisiana Trustee Implementation Group.

Amanda Moore, Senior Director of the Gulf Program for the National Wildlife Federation, said the project aimed to reconnect the Mississippi River to the delta and the Barataria Basin. Its goal was to restore the coastline and improve the health of the estuary. It was a major part of Louisiana’s Coastal Master Plan.

The project began its design phase in 2013 and broke ground in 2023. Moore said it was looking at a 50-year timeframe and was estimated to build 5,000 acres in 10 years and 17,000 acres in 30 years. $618 million was already spent on the project and it was projected to cost close to $3 billion.

“Something that we always need to keep in mind with this project is that it’s not just rebuilding wetlands,” Moore said. “That’s a big part, because that is obviously a storm surge buffer, but it’s also restoring the function of the estuary. There’s a lot of ecosystem benefits beyond just land being built.”

Moore said the ecosystems in that area are dying out due to salinity changes, sea-level rise and the river being cut off from the delta. She said the project would have aimed to fix this.

“This project would keep giving benefits for generations using the natural processes,” Moore said.

The LTIG said the project was canceled due to multiple factors, such as a suspension of a federal permit by the Army Corp of Engineers and ongoing litigation.

Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser said in a letter that the project had ballooned in price from $250 million to $3 billion. He also said the project would harm the dolphin population in that area as well as the oyster and shrimp industry.

Haily Gentry, assistant director at the Tulane Institute on Water Law and Policy, said there was ongoing litigation against the project. Plaquemines Parish alleged that the state did not have the required permits related to elevated flood risk in the area. However, she felt that lawsuit probably would have been decided in favor of the state.

Gentry said a lawsuit was filed by the Earth Island Institute, an environmental advocacy organization, alleging that the impacts of the project on local species had not been fleshed out.

According to the Earth Island institute’s release, they argue that the project would have introduced freshwater into a saline environment, buried existing wetlands and introduced toxic contaminants into the basin’s environment.

Moore said regardless, the fishing industry would be impacted by coastal erosion in the long run, whether the project goes forward or not. She argued that it ultimately would have improved the health of the ecosystem.

Moore said mitigation efforts were already worked into the plan to protect the dolphins and the oyster industry.

“They were working with communities to come up with mitigation plans and they had hundreds of millions of dollars in mitigation funding to support those plans for communities,” Moore said.

Gentry said there are remaining questions about what this cancellation will mean for the rest of Louisiana’s Coastal Master Plan, as the project was a major component of it and much of the modeling and projections were made under the assumption that the project would move forward. She said it’s also unclear what’s going to happen with the money allocated for the project. It was funded using Deepwater Horizon’s Oil Spill penalties.

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