The Controversial Plan to Unleash the Mississippi River

The story was first published in Hakai Magazine.

The world in its earliest days was described as a wide expanse of water by the Chitimacha people. Crawfish were told to bring up a bit of mud. For thousands of years, the Mississippi River dumped soils from the continental United States into the Gulf of Mexico, according to geologists. The river formed a muddy and changing landscape where the water used to go.

The river is mostly restricted to a single channel these days. Imprisoned within artificial levees, it is no longer able to deposit its mud according to the way the river flows. The current mudscape is sinking. The ocean is getting higher in elevation. Delta land in Louisiana has disappeared over the past nine decades.

Few places are going faster than Plaquemine Parish, which covers the muddy land along the river's final 100 or so kilometers. The local equivalent of a county is a parish. The federal government has recently deleted a number of names from local nautical maps according to the man. The areas of open ocean have become undifferentiated.

The state government wants to open a gap in the levee so that the muddy water can be diverted back into the marsh. If the US Army Corps of Engineers approves the project later this year, work on the gap could begin in early 2023. The Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion, which is named for Barataria Bay, has been under discussion for years, but now, on the eve of destruction, it has come under fire from shrimpers. The diversion is intended to build new marshland, but it is sometimes depicted as the latest assault on the region's rural communities.

The sole member who did not vote to oppose the project was a tour guide named Blink. He tells me that we are facing a lot of changes. The loss of land or the diversion will affect the environment. If the parish wants to stay alive, it will have to do something new. He says that we have to imagine a future that is similar to this one.

I think we have failed to imagine the present. We rarely talk about what we mean by land despite the focus on land loss and building. Land in Louisiana is sometimes squishy.

The Mississippi River is the largest river in the world, draining 32 US states and two Canadian provinces. It used to take as much as 300 million metric tons of dirt to get to the Gulf of Mexico each year. One of the side channels forking away from the river would be a good way to get to the Mississippi. The river jumped, or avulsed, in the parlance of geology, and sent its torrent of water down one of these channels.

This process has resulted in a network of sub-deltas that reach into the gulf. The Mississippi River can be found at the center of each sub-delta. The most mud is deposited next to the highest ground, which is less than a few meters above sea level. Theridges are just a few kilometers wide and can stretch for more than 150 kilometers. The modern Plaquemines Parish sub-delta was under construction when the French arrived in the 17th century. One member of the crew wrote that the place consisted of two narrow strips of land and a musket. The growth of the parish was marked by how far the riverbank went past a fort built by the French.

Most of the coastal landscape is made up of the marsh that stretches between the fingers. The mud didn't stack high enough to break the ocean surface, but it did come close enough to allow marsh grass to grow. mats of plants float on top of the water so that if you step on them, they will sink. An area the size of New Jersey was covered by the Delta as of 1930.

The water running through the marsh is fresh and salty. The marsh has an abundance of life because blue crabs, white shrimp, and many other species move across it. Evidence suggests that people arrived on the ridges even as they were forming, possibly to establish short-term hunting and fishing camps.

The colonial records don't have a lot of information about Indigenous life in the Delta. The Quinipissa, the Yakni-Chito, theWasha, the Chawasha, and the Chitimacha were noted by the first French explorers. People lived in small villages to gather fish and other wetlands resources at the time of contact. It was an important crossroads, linking coastal travelers with upriver communities, and French explorers noted that so many canoes had been dragged across one ridge-top portage that they had produced a "rather good road." One of the larger tribes on the land that would become the US South called it Bulbancha, or the place of other languages.

The arrival of European settlers brought disease and slave raids and warfare, and by the time the French began keeping solid records, some Indigenous nations had disappeared. The corners of the delta that are rarely visited by colonists are where some groups snuck into. The US government doesn't officially recognize some of the groups as tribes since there is no written record of their beginning.

Europeans didn't know what to think of the landscape, which was larger and muddier than anything they'd seen before. In the 18th century, a French cartographer depicted a large swath as a blank mass, but 120 years later, a US Army official made his opinion clear. The list of islands and sheets of water would not add anything to the description of Plaquemines Parish.

The marsh becomes something of a no man's land, or maybe it's better to say an every person's land. A group of runaways escaped slavery in the late 18th century and set up an armed camp in the marsh to the east of New Orleans. The Maroons, as they were known, lived alongside Filipino immigrants, who were known to dance atop the shells of dried shrimp. The Canary Islands' immigrants settled nearby. At the beginning of the 20th century, an estimated 150,000 people lived in 200 communities scattered across the Delta. The marsh dwellers used to make their living by trapping and fishing.

Oil was found beneath the marshes in the 1920's. The land that was barely land was the focus of the survey. Some Indigenous residents were unable to read the English language. They were no longer making claims. The majority of southern Louisiana is owned by corporations. A catch all term for coastal vacation homes, fishing camps are now outnumbering permanent homes in places. Modern amenities and lavish architecture can be found in camps.

The ridge drops away into marsh and these camps tend to be clustered in the marina. The only viable tracts of farmland in the Delta are located atop the ridges. 150 kilometers upstream of the river's mouth, New Orleans was founded in 1718. This land was not safe for the city's earliest residents to live on. Water flowed through the half-finished buildings after the river rose. A levee was built along the edge of the river by the colony's commander general. It was the beginning of a long journey to tame the Mississippi.

While other levees were built along the river, they merged into a single entity that spans thousands of kilometers north. Engineers closed the gaps in the levee by the 20th century. They thought this would help the water speed towards the sea.

Engineers were faced with another problem in the 1950s, as the river began to avulse once more. The last un closed outlet was the Atchafalaya River. The final 500 kilometers of the Mississippi could be turned into a creek if the Atchafalaya took over. There were gates put in to stop that jump.

There were a few cries of alarm about the disappearance of land. According to a note in National Geographic, an old Spanish magazine had sunk 30 centimeters over the course of 20 years. The back edges of many plantations built along the riverbanks were falling into the water in the 1940's. Both accounts said the levee was to blame. The ocean was creeping inland as a result of land loss in the 1950s. The focus of the survey was more economic than scientific as the state government was in a dispute with the federal government over where to put the offshore oil deposits. It was thought that the delta would survive. It had been going on for a long time.

Texas asked for the Mississippi's water to be diverted west in the 1960s because of the state's poor water quality. Researchers at Louisiana State University began to investigate potential side effects after learning that this would reduce the river's flow to the coast. The team came back to the crisis of land loss. Scientists blamed levees but also acknowledged the damage done by oil companies. The companies dredged canals to get to the sites where they drilled. In 1970, the LSU scientists described the canals as an "insane" way to change water circulation. A 1997 study found that eachhectare of dredged land caused another 2.85 hectares to disappear.

The LSU report was best known for its proposal to counteract levees. Water and mud should be diverted from the Mississippi back into the marsh. The river had been doing work before it was restrained. Engineers and ecologists have been enamored with the idea for a long time.

Scientists started to cut through the natural banks near the river. Levees were never built along the river because the land near the mouth was so swampy. At the end of the 1980s, the US Army Corps of Engineers was working on a more substantial diversion at a site called Caernarvon. Fresh water is the official purpose of the project. The project was described by local newspapers as a potential conduit for debris and as a way to rebuild the marsh. Hundreds of hectares of new marsh formed a few years after the gates were opened.

The federal government was funding other restoration projects as well. Sand was added to the barrier islands that sit just beyond the delta, a second freshwater diversion was built, and soil was dumped along the coastline. Many believed that large diversions were needed to build entire sub-deltas.

In 2005, New Orleans was walloped by Hurricane Katrina, which kicked up enough gulf water to submerge the city. The missing marshland could have acted as a kind of Hurricane speedbump by absorbing some of the storm-driven waves. Damage to private property proved different to the ecological arguments. The state launched a new agency three months after the storm to oversee both coastal restoration and flood protection.

A proposal for a large-scale diversion was brought to the attention of leaders in Plaquemine Parish. There is a collection of luxury homes on stilts above the marsh in the Barataria Bay area. As the Times-Picayune noted at the time, the local reaction was unanimous: "no, thanks."

Much of the US South was flooded in 1927 by a huge flood on the Mississippi. The nation was riveted by the disaster of the era. As the surge of water approached New Orleans, officials were given permission to blast a hole in the levee, which had grown so large that it was now seen as a problem. The levee's top was threatened by the rising flood waters. The city wanted the water to drop near New Orleans. The city was not affected by the flooding. The residents were promised compensation but never received it.

At the spot where the levee was blown open in 1927, the Caernarvon Diversion was built. Problems for residents were caused by that as well. Oysters require a very precise amount of salt in the water in order to survive. The diversion put too much fresh water in private oyster beds. A group of harvesters filed a lawsuit. After a decade in the courts, the supreme court ruled in favor of Louisiana. State engineers showed up two years later to suggest another diversion that could carry twice the water. The locals were not happy.

Each iteration of theCPRA's master plan, which is updated every six years, increased the size of the diversion. The maximum outflow is called for in the latest plan to be more than 10 times the amount of water that goes through the Caernarvon Diversion. The first diversion's primary focus is carrying silt rather than water into the marsh, which is emphasized by theCPRA. Many politicians don't find the distinction satisfying. The parish president refused to allow soil samples to be drawn at the site. The contractors were sent by theCPRA despite the fact that the permit was merely a formality.

Acy Cooper is the president of the Louisiana Shrimp Association and he tells me that there isn't a son of a bitch in this parish that doesn't want coastal restoration. Cooper knows that if the marshland isn't saved, the chain will end. The water will be replaced by the ocean. Cooper supports using dredged mud to build marsh, but he is worried that the diversion will push shrimp out into the Gulf. Shrimpers use small boats that can't travel that far. If you let me die slowly and I can adapt, you will kill me now. He says that is how he feels about it. I am dead if you shoot me now.

Many of Cooper's worst fears were confirmed in the Army Corps' draft environmental impact statement. Oysters will be hurt. The canals that residents use to travel to their favorite fishing sites will become plugged with mud as a result of the increased tidal flooding.

There are animals. Since the disaster, the species has been struggling. In the past few years, the bay has become home to thousands of dolphins. According to the environmental impact statement, the return of fresh water to the bay could pose a serious threat to this population. The local population may be wiped out completely according to a federal commission. The dolphins are protected by the law, but theCPRA received a waiver exempting the diversion from the laws.

The Army Corps must decide if the diversion is worthwhile. Despite the opposition of the seafood industry and the homeowners, a majority of residents in Plaquemines Parish are in favor of the diversion, according to a recent survey. The project was condemned by the council in the wake of the environmental impact statement. Richie missed the vote but supports the diversion and thinks the community needs more social services to prepare for the transition. One of the coastal parishes reversed its stance after passing a similar resolution. The mayor of New Orleans indicated her support for the diversion.

The diversion is being pursued mostly because it is lucrative for the people in charge. He isn't sure if it will succeed. Mother Nature has changed the country's geography for millions of years. You believe man is going to change it? Cooper makes a statement. The same son of a bitch will fix it.

A group of 55 scientists and academics wrote an open letter in June of 2021. The letter said the Army Corps' recent environmental impact statement was a significant step towards restoring wetlands. Alex Kolker, a coastal scientist with the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, is the first person to sign the letter. Natural levees are where the river punched a hole in the banks and other outlets are artificial. The outlets have created a lot of land.

The landscape that I explore is the New Delta. Over the last six years, the gap has widened nearly sixfold. In the open water beyond the outlet, Blink suddenly stops the boat and jumps off. He stood rather than fell. The water is near his calves.

He says that he has named his boat after the land. He runs the boat in loops in the bay at night, trying to avoid running aground. It is a way to observe the growth of the delta. He gives names to the islands he finds to replace the ones that have vanished.

The trade-offs come with a free-flowing river. The Army Corps is worried that the river's main channel will be blocked by shoals. The outlet is going to be closed. A design that will allow land to accumulate is being pushed by theCPRA.

Not all outlets are so productive. A large crevasse that formed in Plaquemine Parish during a 1973 flood is believed to have contributed to land loss over the next few decades. The crevasse has begun to rebuild the marsh, but not enough to replace what was lost. The Caernarvon Diversion appeared to have resulted in land loss after Hurricane Katrina.

The Army Corps has used computer models to predict the impact of the Mid-Barataria Diversion, but there is no experiment that can verify its effects. The numbers produced by the models were not very impressive. In 50 years, if we don't do anything, we will lose 120,500 hectares of wetlands in the bay. We will lose 115,700 hectares if the diversion is built on time. There is a mass of mud as large as two airports.

There is hope for the delta. The Mid-Barataria Diversion is the first of 10 structures that theCPRA hopes to build over the next ten years.

According to the model, the diversion should help build or retain 12,000 hectares of marsh in the first 30 years. Sea level is rising. A lot of things depend on that. It is a big if that we get our act together with the Climate.

We need to shake our global addiction to fossil fuels to save the Delta. TheCPRA is entangled with the oil industry because they want to save the coastline because of the large reserves of oil and gas in the Delta. Brad Barth, the program manager of theCPRA, told me that the agency aims to find solutions that suit every local interest group. In Louisiana, an old joke suggests that the oil economy is a political necessity. It limits what solutions we can pursue.

According to one estimate, the canals are enough to cross Louisiana from east to west 40 times. Half of the land loss has been caused by canal construction. The US Department of the Interior studied the industry in the late 1980s and came up with a figure of 59 percent. According to Eugene Turner, the author of the study, the rate of canal dredges clearly coincides with the amount of land lost. Turner believes the canals can explain 90 percent or more of the loss.

The impact of oil company canals is downplayed by theCPRA. When I joined a press tour of a massive scale model of the river the agency had funded at LSU, the introductory video said it was due to a number of factors. Only one levee was named. Oil companies have to fill retired canals. The law has never been enforced and some canals have been filled as part of larger projects. The landscape is small compared to the coast and filling a canal is apin drop.

Some people think the canals are not important. Indigenous leaders working as a coalition to restore Louisiana's coast have sought their own sources of funding. There are places where land loss threatens spiritual significance.

The Mississippi valley is home to a distinctive form of architecture that first appeared in Louisiana over 5,000 years ago. The construction is described as an act of world renewal. Many of the mounds have been exposed to ocean waves as the marsh has disappeared. The Lowlander Center received a federal grant last year to work with tribal leaders to identify which canals should be prioritized. TheCPRA will fill a few canals at the request of the Chawasha Tribe. A lot of the tribe's members live in a village that is only accessible by boat.

An elder from the tribe tells me that they will accept what they can get. For so long, no one asked what her ancestors knew or what they wanted.

The site of a mound complex in Barataria Bay was built on a half-hectare site. Only one remains, a small rise of dirt that reaches a meter above sea level, its core exposed to the waves. Only a few trees protrude from the surrounding island of marsh grass if I'd arrived alone. Philippe said her father used to stop here when he was fishing to make himself a glass of lemonade.

Philippe, along with the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana, recruited a group of volunteers to stack sacks of oyster shells in the water near the mounds in order to establish a reef. In some places the reefs have helped cut erosion in half. The reef we visited after Hurricane Ida ripped through Louisiana is still intact a few months later. Philippe says the oyster reef will be the new marker of this sacred place when the mound sinks and disappears.

The largest restoration project in US history is the Mid-Barataria. The Mississippi used to leap in 100 kilometers across the coast. We're giving it a new diversion. The majority of the US $2-billion price tag is devoted to controlling the water, which includes building a concrete trough that will prevent erosion. It should alleviate some of the fears, but it is also a reminder of how much the river's power will be denied.

The project is assessed on the basis of the economy. How much money will be lost when fresh water kills shrimp? The world of cost-benefit analysis is as if every option can be accurately compared. The millions of dollars tourists spend to watch their migration is used to calculate a valuation of the marshland's neotropical bird population. The effort to capture the worth of this place suggests the flaws of the thinking that went into it. Much can't be captured in numbers.

Philippe told me that her ancestors lived in harmony with nature. The floods were accepted by them. They accepted its mud and saw it as a gift. She says that her life is possible because of all the other lives. Anything you take out will be known. There is more than land that we need to restore.