American Energy, Imperiled Coast: Oil and Gas Development in Louisiana's Wetlands

5. THE COASTAL EROSION CRISIS: Wetland Loss and the Oil Field Canal Debate

131 5 THE COASTAL EROSION CRISIS Wetland Loss and the Oil Field Canal Debate I n the 1980s, coastal erosion became a highly charged issue in south Louisiana . The thousands of miles of canals built and permitted throughout the coastal wetlands for oil and gas development over the decades contributed to land loss, but efforts to quantify their impacts provoked controversy. As these ambiguities came to light, industry supporters strongly resisted efforts by environmental groups and government regulators to further restrict development in the wetlands and to force individual companies to pay an environmental cost for past damages related to dredging activities. In the mist of this “oil field canal” debate, a coastal restoration movement emerged that challenged government and industry to take action to stem the tide of coastal land loss and to fund a restoration program for Louisiana. The crisis of coastal erosion and efforts to control it shaped the economic, environmental, and political landscape in the Gulf region. Science provided the knowledge about the rapidly deteriorating wetlands and offered clues about the complex nature of the problem. New studies brought to light the reality that coastal land loss, previously viewed as a gradual process, had been accelerating since the 1930s. During the 1970s, high oil prices and offshore expansion spurred an unprecedented economic boom in the region that required expanded development in the coastal areas. Science, however, revealed the unintended environmental consequences of building this energy pipeline corridor in the wetlands. The ensuing controversy over the environmental impacts of dredging oil field canals drove a wedge between competing coastal interests . State government officials, adopting new scientific findings, attempted to pass new regulations on industry activities, past and present. Not surprising, the industry went on the defensive and successfully fought off much of the criticism for its perceived environmental footprint on the landscape. Canals had been built in south Louisiana long before the oil and gas business arrived. But this polarizing debate in the 1980s created a shadow of uncertainty around the AMERICAN ENERGY, IMPERILED COAST 132 deeply rooted practice of dredging canals that stigmatized the industry and its governmental permitting authorities for decades to come. As the enormity of this land loss problem entered the public consciousness, more people got involved in the issues. Ambivalence gave way to real concern, and some local leaders took action on their own to protect threatened coastal areas. The state government’s lack of urgency and resources to address the problem led to ineffective implementation of early coastal restoration programs. The state’s first “master plan” for restoring the coast dissolved by mid-decade and proved that designing, funding, and managing restoration projects would be a major challenge. A citizens’ coastal coalition arose to bring attention to the unfolding environmental calamity and to pressure the state to develop a real restoration strategy. Defining the Coastal Erosion Problem By 1980, coastal land loss had been studied for more than a decade. Few outside academic circles and fishing communities, however, understood just how fast wetlands were disappearing and what the consequences might be if allowed to continue. New mapping studies produced by coastal scientists in the early 1980s showed a doubling of land loss rates from the 1970s. These new estimates sent shockwaves across the coastal parishes as scientists and political leaders scrambled to understand both the causes and the long-term impacts of this rapid environmental change. The evidence overwhelmingly pointed to manmade factors. In the late 1970s, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management contracted with a local environmental consulting firm, Coastal Environments, Inc. (CEI), to produce a series of habitat maps for use in planning for Outer Continental Shelf oil and gas development and for predicting the potential environmental impact of future expansion, particularly on fisheries. The pathbreaking Mississippi Delta Plain Region Habitat Mapping Study (1980) influenced the discourse of coastal issues for the next several years. Under the direction of Karen Wicker, a researcher at CEI, a team of coastal scientists developed a methodology for establishing hydrological units and analyzing habitat maps to determine change over time. A similar study had been recently developed for the Atchafalaya basin, which was also undergoing rapid change. Modeled after Sherwood Gagliano and Johannes van Beek’s first mapping study 133 THE COASTAL EROSION CRISIS in 1970, the Wicker mapping study was much more comprehensive and utilized new data imagery...