WE’RE (NOT) SCREWED (YET)! You may have read a doomsday headline recently in the Advocate: “We’re screwed.” It refers to the fact that we have lost so much land in south Louisiana already, and are continuing to lose it at a rate of a football field-sized chunk every 100 minutes, that it will be impossible to restore all that we have lost, according to a new peer-reviewed study.
That’s where we come in – not just the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana, but all of us who live, work and play in south Louisiana. And we need help from government.
It’s a grim situation, to be sure. Lead author Torbjörn Törnqvist of Tulane University says that open water could one day extend near Interstate 12 on the north shore of the New Orleans area.
Our executive director, Kim Reyher, recently touched on the new study and about the path forward that will help maximize our restoration efforts. Our policy director, Emily Vuxton, spoke to WWL-AM about why saving our wetlands is so important. And our friends at CPRA and the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation, which recently was rechristened Pontchartrain Conservancy, also had some thoughts on the study and the window of opportunity to save our coast.
But if you read down a few paragraphs, he makes what we think is an important note: that by taking action, we can slow the northward march of the Gulf and can hold on to our wetlands for centuries.
Fortunately, in our state, saving our coast is one of the few issues that brings together people of all political stripes.
