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U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise, R-Metairie, is calling on state lawmakers to abandon a proposal that could allow the Legislature to redirect fines from the Deepwater Horizon disaster to projects unrelated to coastal restoration.

The measure, approved by the Senate Finance Committee Tuesday, was tacked onto House Bill 812, which would call for a referendum on a constitutional amendment directing all the fines the state receives as a result of the spill to the state’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Fund.

“The reason we have fought so strongly to dedicate the BP fines to the Gulf Coast states is to ensure that those monies are only spent on restoring the coast as well as the environmental and economic damage done by the Deepwater Horizon disaster,” Scalise said in a statement released Wednesday. “Just as we’ve made it clear to our colleagues in Congress that the BP fines should not be used for unrelated spending in Washington, the Legislature needs to make it clear that RESTORE Act funds will not be used for unrelated spending in Baton Rouge.”

Senators and representatives in Washington, D.C., are currently hammering out a final version of the RESTORE Act, which would provide a framework for distributing fines from the spill to the states impacted by the disaster.

The amendment adopted by state senators Tuesday would allow some of that money to go to other uses with the approval of two-thirds of each chamber of the state Legislature. Lawmakers would have to specify how the money was being used and would not be able to use it for purposes that were prohibited by Congress or any settlement agreement related to the money.

Supporters of the original bill argued that adding that language would weaken the state’s case for receiving the spill money.

 

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The Sierra Club is asking President Barack Obama to ensure any

settlement of the government’s case against responsible parties for

the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico include financing for Gulf

Coast coastal restoration efforts. A lengthy trial to determine

liability under the Clean Water Act and Oil Pollution Act is scheduled

to begin Feb. 27 in New Orleans federal court. Some legal experts

expect settlement talks to heat up once the trial is under way.

In a letter this week to Obama, Michael Brune, executive director of

the Sierra Club, said a settlement should include at least $10 billion

to implement an early restoration strategy for the Gulf of Mexico and

another $20 billion to enhance the Gulf’s natural resources.

Given the environmental damages discovered long after the 1989 Exxon

Valdez spill, including the continued collapse of the Pacific herring

fishery, Brune said it’s critical that any settlement on the BP spill

has a “reopener provision” to address unanticipated damage.

Rep. Cedric Richmond, D-New Orleans, agreed that the president should

be prepared to act to ensure adequate coastal restoration funding from

the parties responsible for the spill if Congress doesn’t act.

Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., and other Gulf Coast lawmakers continue to

push for congressional enactment of legislation that would allocate 80

percent of Clean Water Act fine money to affected coastal states.

Landrieu expressed doubt the president could target money from any

settlement or court decision to Gulf restoration efforts because she

says the law specifies penalties go to the general fund unless

Congress “directs the money elsewhere.”

Devorah Ancel, a Sierra Club attorney, said the administration could

negotiate a settlement that lowers certain fine and penalty payments

in return for creation of a large fund for Gulf restoration.

Landrieu cautions it would be a shame if talk of a possible settlement

eases the pressure on Congress to pass the Restore Act, which sets

aside most of the penalty money for the five Gulf States.

During a news conference Wednesday with state and local officials who

have been lobbying Congress to pass the legislation, Landrieu said

she’s looking to add the Restore Act to “must pass legislation.” Among

the possibilities, she said, are bills extending the payroll tax

reduction and authorizing transportation projects.

Rep. Steve Scalise, R-Jefferson, said he continues to urge House GOP

leaders to schedule a vote on the Restore Act.

Billy Nungesser, president of Plaquemines Parish, one of the local

officials lobbying this week for the Restore Act, said damage from the

spill continues to degrade the Gulf’s environment.

If Congress doesn’t act to ensure that there’s enough money for

coastal restoration, it would be a mistake of epic proportions,

Nungesser said.

Connie Rocko, a Harrison County (Miss.) Commissioner said the “toxic

political environment” in Washington shouldn’t kill off a bill that

Republicans and Democrats along the Gulf Coast agree is desperately

needed.

 

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BATON ROUGE — A proposed new master plan for protecting and restoring Louisiana’s coast won’t make everybody happy, says the chairman of state panel charged with that task, but it’s a plan that can protect the state from further ruin from storms.

However, said Garret Graves, the chairman of the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, it’s going to take 50 years to complete all the projects in it.

Members of the CPRA got a detailed look at the study, which is an update of one done five years ago with new data gathered by scientists and information on projects done in the past five years.

“This is the most extensive thing we’ve done,” Graves said after a review of the plan presented by Kirk Rhineheart, head of the CPRA planning division. “This is a draft plan, and I’m not going to sit here and say it’s perfect.”

The study is based on the best science available, and “it’s a hell of a lot better than us sitting around making political decisions.”

Rhineheart said now that the draft has been assembled, the next step is to take it back to the communities that are affected and get another round of input. Then a final report will be presented to CPRA for approval and then to the Legislature for consideration in the session that begins March 12.

The plan outlines $50 billion worth of projects to be completed over 50 years. The state and federal governments share the cost of the 145 projects all along the Louisiana coast that are designed to “provide some level of protection for every coastal community,” the plan states.

The plan calls for restoring wetlands, shorelines, headlands and barrier islands that once provided protection from storms but have eroded.

A U.S. Geologic Survey examination of ongoing restoration projects found that they are working to restore lost coastline.

But it’s not enough to eliminate the loss of land equivalent to a football field every 20 minutes, Rhineheart said.

Not long ago, the loss was estimated at a football field every 16 minutes or less.

“Since the 1930s, we’ve lost 1,900 square miles of land,” Graves said The USGS also drew up new maps showing that at the current rates of erosion and subsidence, much of what is coastal Louisiana would be open water by 2060.

Graves said some people are not going to like the plan. Representatives of Plaquemines Parish said he was right, especially the part of the report that calls for rebuilding coastal marsh by diverting more Mississippi River water.

Oyster beds were destroyed when the state sent more river water into marshes of Plaquemines and St. Bernard parishes to try to keep oil from the BP well disaster from washing ashore.

But diversion is one of the least expensive and most effective ways to build up coastal marshland, Graves said.

CPRA member King Milling, head of the America’s Wetlands Foundation, endorsed the plan.

“Given the nature of what’s on the table, I’ve got to go with the best science,” Milling said. Failing to take action would lead to catastrophic loss.

“Loss of this area south of I-10 would have a profound effect on the rest of the country,” he said.

The endangered region highlighted on the USGS maps is where most of the chemical plants and petroleum refineries are located, as well as a fisheries industry that provides much of the nation’s seafood.

Rhineheart said the plan is “scaleable” so projects can be as large or small as the money available.

The plan calls for $10.7 billion of the potential $50 billion funding to be spent on projects to protect southwest Louisiana, including Calcasieu, Cameron and Acadia parishes. Included would be a complex and controversial levee to protect Lake Charles, something residents there opposed.

Another $7.5 billion would be used for projects in the central region, Vermilion through St. Mary parishes. Structures are planned to protect Abbeville, Franklin and Morgan City The Lafourche-Terrebonne region would receive $8.9 billion, split among coastal restoration and levee projects.

Projects in a region from Terrebonne to central Plaquemines involving rerouting Mississippi River water would receive $10.2 billion.

The remaining $14.2 billion would be used in a large region ranging from the Lake Pontchartain area, down through Orleans and St. Bernard and taking in the remainder of Plaquemines.

 

Original Article

The federal government’s failure to write rules for offshore-drilling payments is blocking Louisiana from borrowing as much as $1 billion to fix a coastline ravaged by two hurricanes and the largest U.S. oil spill.

Louisiana, with the most U.S. offshore drilling rigs, according to oilfield-services company Baker Hughes Inc., needs cash to build protective levees, restore beaches and divert water to freshen swamps. To raise funds, Governor Bobby Jindal’s administration is considering selling bonds backed by money from the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act or using it for a federal loan, the state’s coastal authority says in its annual plan.

Yearly payments to the state from new drilling regions opened by the security act may be as much as $200 million by 2017, the coastal plan says. No bonds backed by the money can be sold unless the Interior Department clarifies when and how the royalties will be paid, the plan says, something the four states covered by the act have been seeking for more than a year.

“We can’t wait until 2017 to begin drawing this money to fix our coastline,” Charlotte Randolph, president of Louisiana’s Lafourche Parish, told a conference of the Southern Municipal Finance Society in New Orleans on Nov. 10. “It’s a substantial amount of money and will help rebuild Louisiana.”

The projects are needed after Hurricanes Rita and Katrina caused an estimated $85 billion of damage to Gulf of Mexico states in 2005 and claimed about 1,200 lives, according to the National Hurricane Center. The coast took another blow on April 20 when BP Plc’s Macondo drilling rig exploded and spilled about 5 million barrels of oil into the Gulf over 87 days.

Spending Cuts

Louisiana needs $1.6 billion of spending cuts to balance its fiscal 2012 budget, Paul Rainwater, chief administrative officer, said at the conference. It’s looking for the royalty- backed bonds to create a “surge” in funding for coastline restoration, the 2011 report says.

“Early access to this sort of funding is a key component of our coastal plan,” Garret Graves, chairman of the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, the office handling the financing, said in an e-mail.

The 2006 Gulf security act, known as Gomesa, was sponsored by Louisiana Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu and Pete Domenici, the former Republican senator from New Mexico. The act opened 8.3 million additional acres of the Gulf of Mexico to oil and gas production and allots 37.5 percent of federal revenue from new drilling leases to four coastal states.

Louisiana’s Jindal, Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, Texas Governor Rick Perry and Alabama Governor Bob Riley asked the Interior Department to clarify the rules for Gomesa payments in September 2009.

‘Prompt’ Response

The department will address their questions “promptly,” the governors were informed in a December 2009 letter from Wilma Lewis, assistant interior secretary for land and minerals management.

Louisiana’s coastal authority was told regulations would be ready this month, Andrea Taylor, a department spokeswoman, said in an e-mail. That timeframe “seems unlikely” now, she said, since the coastal authority hasn’t seen draft regulations.

Landrieu’s office is also pushing for rules to be released, said a spokesman, Aaron Saunders.

“The whole goal is to get coastal-restoration projects under way as soon as possible,” he said in a Nov. 24 e-mail.

The Interior Department doesn’t “have a final completion date at this time,” Jordan Montoya, a spokeswoman, said by e- mail. She said the department is working on the rules and offered no details.

Lone State

Alabama isn’t currently planning to sell bonds backed by Gomesa payments, Todd Stacy, a spokesman for Riley, said in a telephone interview. Mississippi doesn’t plan a sale “at the moment,” Laura Hipp, a Barbour spokeswoman, said in an e-mail. Texas has no plans for one, Jim Suydam, a spokesman for the General Land Office, said by e-mail.

Full implementation of Louisiana’s restoration plan is expected to cost “tens of billions” of dollars, said Taylor, the coastal office’s spokeswoman. Work valued at almost $17 billion is under way, funded mostly by federal grants, state mineral revenue, taxes on land-based oil and gas production and through budget surpluses in 2007-2009, the coastal plan says.

Projects include levees and floodwalls to be completed by next year to protect half the coastal population from severe hurricanes, according to the plan. At least one program — funds for municipalities to protect wetlands — has been placed on hold awaiting more Gomesa funds, the report says.

Gomesa Money

Louisiana began getting Gomesa money from a share of 2007 Gulf drilling bids, rentals and production royalties, according to the Interior Department’s website. The amounts are small compared with the cost of work needed, with the $699,757 expected this year by the coastal authority projected to fall to $326,400 in fiscal years 2012 and 2013, the 2011 plan says.

In 2017, when the federal government includes funds from additional oil and gas leases, the amount will rise to as much as $200 million a year, the coastal authority projects. The payment will be affected by prevailing oil and gas prices and production levels, Dek Terrell, who teaches economics at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, told a March meeting of the coastal authority.

The pace of permits granted for Gulf drilling may also influence Gomesa income. The Obama administration has been issuing fewer rights even after it lifted a deepwater-drilling moratorium on Oct. 12 that followed BP’s oil spill.

“The slowdown in activity is going to have a definite impact on production,” Don Briggs, president of the Louisiana Oil and Gas Association, said in a telephone interview. “Less production will mean lower revenues.”

Accelerated Payments

Landrieu introduced legislation after the BP oil spill to accelerate the time when additional lease revenue is included in Gomesa payments. She also proposed a law to use at least 80 percent of the penalties charged to BP under the Clean Water Act for coastal restoration. The fines may be as much as $21 billion, based on an expert panel’s Aug. 2 estimate of the amount of oil spilled.

Meanwhile, Louisiana’s coastal authority is looking beyond Gomesa. It’s considering debt backed by future Clean Water Act fines and selling greenhouse-gas credits, Graves said.

“The solutions we develop and implement in coastal Louisiana will have worldwide application,” he said by e-mail.

Original Article

But the months-long assault of oil in Barataria Bay — and more importantly the state’s decision to unleash fresh water from the river to beat back oil — has wiped out more than three-quarters of his crop, leaving the next five years an open question.

“Where do I start reinvesting? Where do I start redeveloping?” Vujnovich said last week, after returning to Port Sulphur from his first trip to haul oysters since May 22. “Is it going to be clear in 10 years? Is it going to be clear in two years?”

The Deepwater Horizon oil disaster has triggered endless amounts of soul-searching across the Gulf Coast, but it’s difficult to find impacts so profound as those felt by the Louisiana oyster industry. The freshwater diversions opened along the river by Gov. Bobby Jindal’s administration were an emergency measure meant to address the encroaching oil, but the effects on the oyster industry have rekindled an important debate about the trade-offs and sacrifices entailed in coastal restoration.

Coastal restoration master plan

River diversions such as the ones opened this spring and summer are a cornerstone of the state’s coastal restoration master plan. More and bigger diversions of fresh water through engineered gaps in Mississippi River levees are seen as a crucial component to beating back salt water from the Gulf of Mexico that has eroded marshes and led to monumental land loss.

The goal is to mimic the natural environment from centuries before, when an unbridled river without levees naturally spilled fresh water and mud into the marshes during flood stages. The interaction of fresh and salt water created diverse habitats ranging from cypress swamp to saltwater marsh grass, and created one of the most productive nurseries for seafood in the world — oysters included.

But levees built for flood protection along the river during the past century have disconnected the land-building river from the marshes it used to feed, allowing the Gulf to creep farther inland. During that shift, the oyster industry evolved into what it is today: more than 3,000 square miles of private oyster leases and public oyster grounds scattered across the marshes of the state.

Many of today’s leases are in areas that would not have been historically ideal for oyster production, which requires a delicate balance of fresh and saltwater influence. As the system has gradually become saltier farther inland, oyster production has taken root.

Oyster beds need balance

Generations of lease holders and oyster fishers have invested countless hours and dollars into cultivating oyster beds — basically hard formations of rocks and shells built up over time — that are tied to specific geographical locations. So naturally there has been widespread concern in the oyster industry when there are discussions of introducing large amounts of fresh water into the estuaries.

“The problem here is that there is an industry that has built up around certain conditions,” said Thomas Soniat, a professor who has extensively studied oysters in the department of biological sciences at the University of New Orleans. “The real concern here is that with freshwater diversions, the proper salinities for growing oysters will be pushed to an area away from where there’s adequate hard bottom, and also it’ll be pushed away from where people have developed those leases and built up a hard bottom.”

The debate reached fever pitch a decade ago east of the Mississippi River, when oyster farmers sued the state for damage to oyster leases as a result of the Caernarvon freshwater diversion. One of the suits in Plaquemines Parish resulted in an award of more than $1 billion in damages to oyster lease holders, before it was overturned by the Louisiana Supreme Court.

After the court episode, which resulted in a judgment that left the state largely immune to future damage suits for coastal restoration projects, the oyster industry has been in limbo.

Moratorium  on leases

A moratorium on new oyster leases has been in place since 2002, around the time of the court case. The state Legislature created a panel in 2008 tasked with studying ways to lift the moratorium, which delivered a report to the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries earlier this year.

The report recommended several procedural changes to the lease system, including liability exemptions for existing oil and gas activity on new oyster leases and a recommendation to re-evaluate ownership of state water bottoms. Oyster leases are actually owned by the state, but leased out for two dollars per acre per year.

But many in the oyster industry were critical of the way the committee was designed, giving representatives of the oil and gas industry and coastal landowners more seats than those in the oyster industry.

In the wake of the oil spill, however, many in the industry and outside observers see a chance to revisit the tough questions surrounding coastal restoration and the future of the oyster industry — and possibly get some answers.

Future of the industry debated

Last month Garret Graves, Jindal’s coastal adviser, announced the creation of the Governor’s Oyster Advisory Committee, a 15-member panel tasked with making decisions about the future of the industry and the use of BP funds and other money that could aid the fishery.

Some of the more pressing questions facing the committee deal with whether to reopen leasing in certain areas, and where to do it. Graves said the intention is to map out salinity zones to guide the industry, based on the locations of potential diversion sites that may be constructed in the future.

“We want to be able to start sketching out areas where at a minimum we should not reinvest, because of contaminated sediments from oil, or what the salinity levels look like, so that way you can at least start ruling areas out and start guiding people,” Graves said.

He added that the long-term risks of coastal land loss pose the same questions about the viability of the oyster industry as any concerns about increased fresh water in the estuaries.

“I don’t look at this like an either-or, where you have winners or losers,” Graves said. “It’s pretty clear that on the current path, considering that 2,300 square miles has been lost, that without fundamental change and some major investments in our coastal area … Yes, the oyster industry is in jeopardy, but not because of anything the state did or didn’t do. It’s in jeopardy because of the incredible changes happening to our coast.

“It’s not like the status quo truly means that everything stays the same.”

In principle, everyone in the oyster industry agrees.

A tale of two camps

It’s in the details where things start to break down. Although there are many different tools and approaches for coastal restoration, the major proposals break down into two fundamental camps: diversions of the river to funnel fresh water and sediment into the marshes, and large-scale dredging and piping of sediment.

Some combination of the two is needed, most coastal scientists agree, but many in the oyster industry believe that major diversions of the river will do little to build land quickly. Most of them push for smaller diversions of the river that are carefully monitored and released at strategic times.

“As far as freshwater diversions as a tool to create land, that’s not the purpose in my eyes,” said Vujnovich, the Port Sulphur oyster farmer who serves on the governor’s advisory committee. “I don’t see that working. The river doesn’t carry that much sediment; it just doesn’t have the land-building capability anymore.”

Plus he brought up the question of drastically changing brackish and saltwater marsh into a fresher system, and trying to reestablish oyster grounds farther away from the river.

“My basic theory is that it took 50 to 80 years for the erosion and increased salinities to move these resources farther north,” Vujnovich said. “You can’t reverse it back overnight.”

Although there has been recent strife between the oyster industry and proponents of freshwater diversions, it was actually the oyster industry early last century that first proposed the idea of freshwater diversions. Studies from the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries dating back to the 1920s suggested opening up the river to freshen up oyster beds that were becoming too salty.

Fresh water kills oysters, but water that is too salty leaves them open to predators — most notably a snail called the oyster drill that can get through shells.

“The coastal restoration guys painted the oyster industry as being against coastal restoration, which we never were,” said John Tesvich, another Port Sulphur oyster farmer who chairs the Louisiana Oyster Task Force. “We are for diversions. We were for it when nobody else was for it. We want to be able to control salinity, because that’s what enhances the fisheries. But these ideas that fresh water will just build land … Well, not in our lifetime. Not in time to do much good. So why keep going that way?”

The character of the diversions is also different from the more natural flood events that would have taken place before levees were built along the river. Diversions are much more of a concentrated point source for fresh water, as opposed to a gradual overflow of river water that would have taken place periodically over hundreds of square miles of marsh.

The state’s coastal restoration master plan, which is undergoing an 18-month revision, is also accounting for the anticipated changes for the oyster industry. Some of the recommendations will likely include abandonment of certain oyster grounds that will be too fresh for harvesting.

Despite the natural suspicion the oyster industry has about how fresh water affects the future, some say that there is a middle way. Up until now, much of the indecision about restructuring the oyster industry was because of a severe lack of funding.

“I think things have gotten to a level of action that we’ve not seen before because we’re starting to see money pumped into the state, from one source or another,” said Earl Melancon Jr., a professor of biological sciences at Nicholls State University who is assisting the state with the coastal restoration master plan revisions. “What I am glad to see is that finally things have moved to the point where there’s the reality that some of this stuff is going to happen. … I am seeing now, finally, more and more discussion in terms of ‘Just how are we going to change the estuaries?’ Now we’re talking about ‘Is there a way to have your cake and eat it too?’ I’m of the opinion that if you’re willing to manage things properly, you can.”

Original Article