State Releases Revised Plan For Coastal Protection And Restoration
The state has released its revised coastal protection and restoration masterplan that’s designed to reduce hurricane storm surge and restore Louisiana’s vanishing coastline. Bren Haase with the state’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority says the plan proposes 120 projects.
“They’re broken down between restoration, structural protection projects, and what we call non-structural protection, which is elevating homes and flood proofing businesses and voluntary acquisitions,” Haase said.
Haase says public meetings are scheduled throughout the state to gather public input on the plan. The first meeting will be held on January 17th in Lake Charles. He says the worst case scenario for the coast would be about 4-thousand square miles of land loss if they did nothing.
“We’re anticipating that the plan can deliver anywhere from about 800 to almost 1,200 square miles of land along our coast that we wouldn’t have otherwise,” Haase said.
Haase says roughly $18 billion has been secured to implement the 50-year plan, which would take $50 billion to fully fund it. He says another important part of the plan is reducing storm surge damage along the coast.
“In terms of expected annual damages related to storm surges associated with hurricanes and tropical storms, we think we can reduce that by between roughly $8 billion and $12 billion at year 50,” Haase said.