Save Our Wetlands - Editorial: A Line in the Marsh - Morganza to the Gulf of Mexico Project

Editorial - A Line in the Marsh

July 23, 2006
Oliver Houck

re: Morganza to the Gulf of Mexico Project

I drove back from Houston last week along the coast road, dropping down from Port Arthur, Texas, toward Cameron, La., and then up to Abbeville, passing Holly Beach on the way. But of course there is no Holly Beach any more. There are concrete slabs where houses used to be. Even the stop signs were ripped away by Hurricane Rita.

Out in the Gulf of Mexico, pretty far out now, stands a row of concrete structures, tall as sunken ships, washed over, washed around. They were a key part of the Army Corps of Engineers coastal protection and restoration program, which has spent tens of millions of dollars trying to protect Holly Beach from the Gulf, about 40 yards away. Now we're about to do something even more ambitious: build a wall around South Louisiana, in a project known as the Morganza-to-Gulf hurricane protection project.

This week the U.S. Senate passed a water resources bill touted as Corps of Engineers reform. The Louisiana delegation has tacked some remarkable provisions onto the bill, however. The first is money to begin an enormous levee system west of the Mississippi River that will run down to the Gulf below Houma, and cut off more than half a million acres of wetlands, north from south. The wetlands behind the levee will get developed -- think New Orleans east. The wetlands below will be put on short rations.

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