Is state ignoring its major problem?

Louisiana presents to its citizens a difficult problem.

Its coast is undoubtedly one of the world’s greatest treasures of wildlife and fisheries in the world, but what is holding that treasure together are our coastal wetlands.

Now that these wetlands are deteriorating into the Gulf of Mexico, we are threatened with a loss as big as they come. One of the world’s most productive areas for producing wildlife and fisheries is deteriorating at a fast rate.

For many years now, we have had plans underway to save those wetlands. They were backed by much scientific study and plans seemed to be developing that would save our coast.But where have they gone?

We keep hearing less and less about them and more about other state problems, as if there is any problem more severe.

There have been plans to divert water from the rivers to help build up the wetlands and our coast. And there have been plans to pump sediment into areas of the coast that have turned from wetlands into open water to rebuild them into more solid land again.

But where have they gone? Except for a few instances, we have not seen the development of the coast that we wished for.

Along the Fourchon shore west of Grand Isle, there has been a healthy build-up of sand that has expanded the beach to project some promise of a brighter future. And also in the delta of the Atchafalaya River, there seems to be a great deal of buildup in solid land.

But we haven’t seen enough progress along the Mississippi River where the main source of land buildup could come from. That is where the main river diversion projects were to start and bring the main sediment that would rebuild our coast.

Hopefully, this is an overlook on our part. And, hopefully, we will turn it into a solid effort to continue the Louisiana coast as a great producer of wildlife and fisheries, which it has been in the past.

And that will fit into the past picture of Louisiana as our nation’s most productive shoreline. It will create a successful phase of restoration for our state that has so much to gain in being the nation’s greatest coastal treasure.