Reader: Flood protection: with levees or without?

Dear Editor:

I was shocked and dismayed by the narrow vision and selfish point of view of guest columnist Cynthia Sarthou, which was published in The Courier on July 6.

Ms. Sarthou is the executive director of the Gulf Restoration Network. Apparently this organization is now canvassing the Houma-Terrebonne community for donations.

In Ms. Sarthou’s article, she expresses concerns about a portion of the Morganza alignment that would enclose a large area of unpopulated wetlands. She states that her organization believes that building a hurricane-protection system that uses wetlands as a levee buffer will provide better protection.

We all wish there were more wetlands left out there. While no one could argue against having more wetlands to buffer storms, the fact of the matter is that our wetlands in the Terrebonne Basin have already disappeared and further loss will continue if Morganza is not built along its proposed alignment.

The Gulf Restoration Network is proposing that the Morganza alignment should be changed to exclude most of the area south of the Intracoastal Canal, proposing to write off the economically and environmentally significant parishes of Terrebonne, Lafourche and Jefferson that form the Barataria Terrebonne Basin. The GRN’s well-intended pontification about what’s best for everyone outside of the levee-protected areas of New Orleans is very troubling.

Morganza’s lock and floodgate features and systems of weirs and environmental structures create great environmental tools to restore and preserve our wetlands by blocking the inward flow of salt water and increasing the amount of freshwater flowing into the area from the Atchafalaya River through the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway.

What Ms. Sarthou and her group’s leaders seem to fail to understand is that we are in a region where the wetlands have substantially disappeared and the Gulf’s waters are hungrily eating away at what is left. If Morganza’s environmental structures are not implemented soon, there will be nothing left to defend.

Part of the delay in obtaining the resources we need is a direct result of well-intended organizations like the Gulf Restoration Network, whose members are safely ensconced behind levees, enjoying unlimited federal funding and national sympathy, while our wetlands in the Barataria Terrebonne basin wash into the Gulf, making our ultimate protection and preservation harder to achieve.

I have previously viewed the “Paradise Faded, The Fight for Louisiana” documentary by Jared Arsement. This documentary is a compelling story on the plight of coastal Louisiana. I urge everyone to view this documentary.

Nowhere else is this story more poignant than in the Barataria Terrebonne Basin. Yet, after viewing this film, I was left with the distinct belief that the citizens of the metropolitan New Orleans area, with their billions of dollars in federal funding and extensive levee systems, believe we should forgo the expenditures necessary to protect our local area. It appears these individuals want to solicit more monies… our monies… to further their cause; protect New Orleans at the expense of Terrebonne.

Jack Moore, Houma