A billion-dollar coastal project begins in Louisiana. Will it work as sea levels rise?
By KEVIN McGILL
Associated Press
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Officials have broken ground in southeast Louisiana on a nearly $3 billion project to fight coastal wetland loss. It involves building massive gates in a section of levee in a rural area southeast of New Orleans and creating a channel to divert some of the Mississippi River’s sediment-laden water into an area known as the Barataria Basin. If the Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion project works as intended, solids in the river water will settle out in the basin and gradually restore land that has been steadily eroding for decades. Project construction is projected to take five years.
