Our relatives in Houston and southwest Louisiana were thankful to survive last month’s hurricanes without injuries or major home damages. But our cousin Joe Turk who lives in Eunice, LA, lost about half his beach home property at Cameron, near the Texas border, to Hurricane Ike.

When Joe first bought that beach property a few years ago, the house had a nice yard about 200 feet from the water. Now the water’s just a few steps from his front door.

“I’d rather have lost my house than my land,” Joe told us after Ike’s winds and rains surged through the south Texas and Louisiana coasts September. 12. “I lost about 15 feet with Rita and 150 more with Ike. About one more hurricane and I won’t have any land left.”

As thousands of Texas and Louisiana residents still struggle to put their lives and property back together from yet another devastating hurricane, Joe is among the many in his state worried about the steady erosion of Louisiana’s costal marshes, swamps and barrier islands.

“Right now it seems like its only affecting those of us who live here, but it will affect everyone,” Joe said. And he’s right. The ongoing disappearance of Louisiana’s shore line should be a national concern.

Louisiana’s coast hosts oil and gas refineries (which many other states don’t tolerate near their shores) which produce fuel for the entire country, and ports that service offshore oil and gas production.

The coastal wetlands are also home to a thriving fishing and seafood industry and a fascinating variety of wildlife and plants. Protection of these resources is of national importance. And so is the protection of the lives of people who live along the coast and that area’s unique culture, music and cuisine.

The state’s wetlands have been disappearing at an alarming rate – about a football field-size chunk per hour – since the early 1930s, when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers completed major levee and lock and dam systems following the great Mississippi River flood of 1927.

The locks and dams have helped control flooding, but now instead of the river’s spring flooding depositing its nutrient-rich sediment into the marshlands to nourish and rebuild them, the sediment flows by the tons directly into the Gulf of Mexico.

Transportation channels that were cut through the marshlands to help move the oil and gas produced in the Gulf also hurt the wetlands. And so do the seawaters that flow into the canals during hurricane surges. In 2005 alone, the state lost 217 square miles of coast from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
Restoring Louisiana’s coast, where 30 percent of America’s energy production and refining take place. will take time and billions.

Ten years from now the state is supposed to start getting about 100 million dollars per year of the oil and gas royalty dollars it annually sends to Washington.

But “yesterday” was not soon enough to start restoration and 10 years from now will be too late, many experts warn. The state’s barrier island erosion is already to the point that hurricanes have little to stop or even slow down their wind, flood and surge paths from sweeping farther and farther inland from their official landfalls. State-sold bonds backed by the state’s royalty- sharing income may become an option for more immediate funding for the rebuilding of the state’s coast.

Meanwhile, at least two separate grassroots groups – Voice of the Wetlands (VOW), headed by Grammy Award-winning musician Tab Benoit of Houma, and the non-affiliated Save Our Wetlands/True Voice of the Wetlands – are helping attract national support for restoration of the state’s hurricane and tidal surge barrier wetlands.

Benoit’s VOW group is hosting this month its Fifth Annual Voice of the Wetlands Festival, October 10-12, at Southdown Plantation in Houma, Louisiana. The festival’s lineup of outstanding Louisiana and Texas musicians includes Benoit, The Radiators, Kim Wilson, C.C. Adcock and a host of others. To learn more about the festival, the discounted observation airplane flights over the coast’s wetlands, or other ways you can get involved with helping save Louisiana’s coast and wetlands, visit www.voiceofthewetlands.com. Lives, wildlife, jobs, and national security are at stake.

Turk’s property is less than half the size it was before the storm. Before:

After:

 

 

Linda Seubold, editor of Entertainment Fort Smith Magazine, can be reached at lindaseubold@efortsmith.com. Read her archived columns and articles online.

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