The Lens

By Mark Moseley, The Lens opinion writer

Thursday, The Times-Picayune ran a front-page story on the state’s newly-released 50-year strategy to confront south Louisiana’s coastal loss crisis. Like many previous plans, Louisiana’s 2012 Coastal Master Plan for a Sustainable Coast makes a compelling case for restoration while not downplaying the complexity of the challenge. The master plan draft recommends a variety of approaches to repair the eroding coast over the coming decades, including river diversions, marsh creation, higher levees, and elevated houses.

However, I was puzzled with this claim made in the T-P’s account of the plan:

“Between 2032 and 2061, the recently completed 100-year New Orleans area levee system would be upgraded to provide 500-year protection for $1.8 billion.”

That’s a project of massive importance to New Orleans, yet no details were provided. I consulted the plan’s project list and, sure enough, in the 2031-2061 Southeast Coast section there is a structural project labeled “Greater New Orleans High Level” for a cost of $1,752.99 million (about $1.8 billion). I thought, “Surely this can’t mean an ‘upgrade’ to complete 500-year protection – protection against the biggest storms the Gulf whips up, storms two or three times the strength of Katrina at its peak. There’s no way in hell that we can raise the city’s levee system that robust for only $1.8 billion. Not now, and certainly not in two or three decades.”

Read more…