Doug Brinkley gave us one of the best solutions to the oil crisis in a program on CNN TV last week. He said we should open up the Mississippi River that has been leveed in for almost a century to flow into and clean up the wetlands of Louisiana of the oil that is invading.
This is what we have been trying to do for years with river diversion projects to build up the wetlands but it has been far too slow. In fact, we have only two such projects of any size after 50 years of planning.
But we should re-define such diversions to really have an effect in keeping the wetlands fresh and productive of vegetation that can preserve the coast and those priceless wetlands. And this will help push back the influx of oil that could destroy the productive coast of Louisiana.
We thought President Barack Obama would support more such diversions in his speech from the Oval Office Tuesday night but he made no mention of it. He mainly re-said what he had told us before that he was 100 percent behind stopping the flow of oil and cleaning up the mess to the point that the Gulf Coast will be better than before. What better way of doing that than to re-route some of the fresh river water to help clean it up and restore the barrier islands to their former status in protecting our coast.
The President did give in a little on his six-month moratorium on further offshore drilling activity, which would seriously cripple Louisiana’s economy. He said he has urged his oil spill commission to accelerate their findings on how to prevent such a spill in the future.
He also stated his approval of re-building some of the barrier islands but did not state just how many. So far, the federal government has approved the work on only six of them but Gov. Bobby Jindal wants all of them restored. The President needs to expand on that a great deal.
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