Landry completely misrepresented the appendix of an engineering report to call the diversion threatening to shrimp when it was talking about ranges of possibilities.
Important context from the article includes things such as: unspent funds remain available for future projects; the works were predicted to have a devastating impact on local wildlife, such as killing an estimated 6,000 dolphins; this is not a partisan issue, as there have been outspoken Dems and Republicans on either side; also devastating impact to the local fishing industry was predicted, prompting a $400m lawsuit to curtail the project.
> unspent funds remain available for future projects
Not according to the article?
> Its collapse means that the state could lose out on more than $1.5 billion in unspent funds and may even have to repay the $618 million it already used to begin building.
> The Louisiana Trustee Implementation Group, a mix of federal agencies overseeing the settlement funds, said that “unused project funds will be available for future Deepwater Horizon restoration activities” but would require review and approval.
The article doesn't even go into this, but the primary cause of the issue is not climate change, but natural processes. The Mississippi river used to be undammed and untrammeled; envision a hose whipping around (in geological terms) spraying tremendous amounts of sediment over a very wide area.
Now, the Mississippi is tightly controlled. Most areas are no longer getting that sediment. So natural subsidence and erosion processes mean that "land" is sinking back below the water.
The solution (for this project) entailed reconnecting the Mississippi to the area, restoring sediment deposition. But this does have a lot of negative effects as well, because it impacts salinity levels and of course the Mississippi is also full of fertilizer and other substances.
I know nothing about Landry and have no opinion on him or those statements specifically, but I'm familiar with the kerfuffle over the Bonnet Carré Spillway that allegedly devastated Mississippi fisheries, and obviously it has some impact. I suppose he overstated them?
The claim is that opening the spillway decreased salinity in the Mississippi Sound and caused substantial hardship for Mississippi fishermen. They want it opened less often, not more often. There was a lawsuit against the Army Corps of Engineers over it. It’s hard to see why Mississippi would care at all if it weren’t true.
> With salinity levels bottomed-out as a result of the overwhelming freshwater intrusion from the Spillway, an estimated 95% of the estuary’s oyster population was wiped out. 2018 remains the last time a wild oyster was harvested from Mississippi waters – once among the most productive oyster fisheries in the world.
> Data provided by MDMR shows the seafood industry along the Coast, which in many respects was both the first and primary early-economic driver of the region, suffered revenue losses exceeding $210 million in 2019 alone.
How have these goddamn morons got elected? How high the voter turnout has been?
I'm afraid it's not stupidity, but malfeasance, likely fueled by some kind of corruption.
(It's not impossible, of course, that Louisiana's population universally hates the coastal cleanup effort and demands to stop it, no matter what it costs,and the administration just followsthe will of the people. Somehow I never heard of such unusual sentiment though.)
The gist of it is that people think short term. They can care about the environment/greater good but if you promise them jobs/prosperity in the short term they'll usually vote for that, despite their livelihood/environment being destroyed by the industry that promised them the jobs. Then when things don't work out they blame minorities, women, etc for "cutting in line" with the help of people like Obama and democrats.
It's really not that complicated which, imo, is kind of sad.
> It's really not that complicated which, imo, is kind of sad.
They learn in school that "others" are to blame. (British, for starting the American revolution, Japanese for WW2). Analytic thinking is hard, especially when it doesn't fit the current narative.
> Its collapse means that the state could lose out on more than $1.5 billion in unspent funds and may even have to repay the $618 million it already used to begin building.
This is at the same time the state is protecting hundreds of millions of dollars in budget deficits.
If I'm reading this right, which is hard because most of the information is missing... The whole project is $3B. Someone else is kicking in $1.5B, $618M has already been spent, so maybe completion requires $872M and not completion takes $618M. Or maybe $618M was spent of the outside contribution, so it's $1.5B to complete and $618M to cancel?
If the state doesn't have the money, cancellation sounds less expensive than completion, in the short term. Of course, the costs for not doing the coastal repairs will continue to acrue, but if there's no money, there's no money?
> If the state doesn't have the money, cancellation sounds less expensive than completion, in the short term. Of course, the costs for not doing the coastal repairs will continue to acrue, but if there's no money, there's no money?
I feel like this story has played out so many times before with the end result being the federal government ends up paying for it but only after it becomes much more expensive than if we had paid for it much earlier? I feel like this is a defect in how we run our government.
