WHY VOW
Louisiana's oil and gas infrastructure is responsible for 17% of the domestic oil and 25% of the natural gas produced in the United States. The wetlands are home to this production and act as the first line of defense in protecting the facilities from floods and hurricanes.
It's not just Louisiana's problem. To dismiss the erosion of coastal Louisiana is to dismiss an issue that will create a chain reaction affecting all of the United States.
Over time, the geological force known as the Mississippi River gradually deposited enough sediment into the receding Gulf of Mexico to create tens of thousands of square miles of land all the way down to what is the present mouth of the river. Levees were built and shipping channels were kept open via jetties causing the Mississippi to drop its sediment into deep water. Those levees and jetties stopped sediment from feeding the deltas, thus causing the land to sink and coastal Louisiana to begin disappearing.
Making New Orleans vulnerable, well over a century ago, also created tremendous value to the United States. New Orleans is the busiest port in the U.S. - 20% of all U.S. exports and 60% of U.S. grain exports pass through it. Off the coast of Louisiana oil and gas wells supply 20% of domestic oil production - the largest percentage produced domestically. But canals and pipelines were dug through the land to service the oil industry, greatly accelerating the erosion and depleting the land that once protected the entire region from hurricanes by acting as a sponge to soak up the storm surges. That is one thing the energy industry and environmentalists agree on.
The other thing they agree on is that the problem is easily solved by managing the land loss and protecting the Louisiana coast and New Orleans. Protection for the region including coastal restoration, storm-surge barriers and improved levees would cost an estimated $40 billion over a 30 year period. The consequences of dismissing the problem: less international competitiveness; higher energy prices (already demonstrated in the aftermath of Katrina and Rita) and more vulnerable energy supplies; astronomical cost of having to rebuild the United States' largest energy and port infrastructure elsewhere. The U.S. energy needs alone call for action in restoring and preserving the Louisiana wetlands.
So how does the restoration get paid for and, more importantly, who pays it?
"States get 50% of the tax revenues paid to the Federal Government from oil and gas produced on federally owned land. States justify that by arguing that the energy production puts strains on their infrastructure and environment. Louisiana gets no share of the tax revenue from the oil and gas production on the outer continental shelf. Yet that production puts an infinitely greater burden on it than energy production from other federal territory puts on any other state. If we treat Louisiana the same as other states and give it the same share of tax revenue that other states receive, it will need no other help from the government to protect itself."
- Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House and John M. Barry
Each day delayed makes it harder to restore the wetlands and protect Louisiana, the region, the nation. It is time for action.
Louisiana is the drainage gateway to the Gulf of Mexico for the Lower Mississippi Regional Watershed. The Lower Mississippi Regional Watershed drains more than 24 million acres in seven states from Illinois to the Gulf of Mexico.
It will be gone in less than 50 years Coastal Louisiana has lost an average of 34 square miles of land, primarily marsh, per year for the last 50 years. From 1932 to 2000, coastal Louisiana lost 1,900 square miles of land, roughly an area the size of the state of Delaware. If nothing more is done to stop this land loss, Louisiana could potentially lose approximately 700 additional square miles of land, or an area about equal to the size of the greater Washington D.C.-Baltimore area, in the next 50 years.
