LEFT TO LOUISIANA’S TIDES, A VILLAGE FIGHTS FOR TIME

LEFT TO LOUISIANA’S TIDES, A VILLAGE FIGHTS FOR TIME

For the community of Jean Lafitte, the question is less whether it will succumb to the sea than when — and how much the public should invest in artificially extending its life.

The Drowning Coast

This three-part special report about the ecological crisis facing Louisiana’s vanishing coast, and the people who live there, is the product of a partnership between The New York Times and NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune of New Orleans.

Vanishing wetlands near the east bank of the Mississippi River.

By KEVIN SACK and JOHN SCHWARTZ Photographs by WILLIAM WIDMER FEB. 24, 2018

‘WE ARE LITERALLY IN

A RACE AGAINST TIME’

The West Closure Complex is part of a sprawling hurricane risk reduction system that protects greater New Orleans. The city is

visible in the distance. William Widmer for The New York Times

INSECTS FEAST ON LOUISIANA WETLANDS,INVITING THE GULF IN

A pest known as a scale appears to be killing off reeds that

bind the state’s coast together, speeding land loss and

endangering oil wells, shipping routes and fishing grounds.

By TRISTAN BAURICK FEB. 24, 2018

Louisiana’s “working coast” is dotted with communities that, like Lafitte, may not outlast the people who currently live there: Cocodrie, Delacroix, Dulac, Grand Isle, Isle de Jean Charles, Kraemer, Leeville, Paradis, Pointe-aux-Chenes, Venice.

A fourth of the state’s wetlands are already gone, with heavy losses tallied from 2005 to 2008, when the coast was battered in succession by Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, Gustav and Ike. In 2011, the federal government retired 35 place names for islands and bays and passes and ponds that had simply ceased to exist.

State planners believe another 2,000 square miles, or even double that, could be overtaken in 50 years as the land sinks, canals widen and sea levels rise because of climate change. Recent studies show that glacial melting is accelerating in Antarctica and Greenland, driving sea level rise on the Gulf Coast.

Thinning stands of roseau in coastal wetlands near the mouth

of the Mississippi River.William Widmer for The New York Times

The scale starts life in a “crawler” stage, hitching rides on birds

or floating debris until it finds the roseau plants to eat. Dr. Rodrigo Diaz, Department of Entomology, LSU AgCenter