Louisiana oyster growers bitterly oppose Louisiana’s largest coastal project

NEW ORLEANS (WVUE) – South of Empire close to the barrier islands, Nathan Jurisich mans the controls of one in every of his household’s oyster boats because it scrapes the water backside.

“There’s not too many people left,” mentioned the 30-year-old Jurisich, a fourth-generation oysterman in a enterprise many younger folks now keep away from.

“That is all I’ve ever needed to do all my life,” Jurisich mentioned. “I simply adore it and I like being out right here.”

His father, Mitch, navigates via a discipline of bamboo poles south of Empire when Mitch’s grandparents began the household enterprise.

The poles, Mitch mentioned, mark oysters leases, “on either side of what was marshland.”

In the present day, it’s a huge expanse of open water typically six toes deep, separated by the Gulf of Mexico solely by a string of islands.

Mitch has witnessed this a part of the coast degrade from marshes and bayous to at least one giant bay.

“They are saying stage 4 most cancers is the worst most cancers you possibly can have,” the elder Jurisich mentioned. “Louisiana’s in stage 10 most cancers proper now.”

But, folks within the oyster enterprise now see the state’s most ambitious-ever coastal undertaking as the best risk to their livelihoods.

Extra: Louisiana’s largest coastal undertaking ‘on the 2-yard line,’ CPRA says

The $2 billion Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion would channel as much as 75,000 cubic toes per second of Mississippi River water and sediment into the marsh south of Belle Chasse.

A last environmental influence assertion from the U.S. Military Corps of Engineers finds the diversion would sculpt 21 sq. miles of land over 50 years.

“To attend 50 years, that is gonna be up in opposition to the doorstep of New Orleans,” mentioned Jurisich, who chairs the Louisiana Oyster Job Power. “I don’t assume there’s any undertaking large enough that may fight what’s coming in 50 years.”

Oystermen complain that a lot recent water within the system would devastate oyster leases. Jurisich argues the state’s tourism tradition can be at stake.

“Individuals don’t come to New Orleans to eat steak,” Jurisich mentioned. “They arrive for its native aptitude, its seafood, our tradition, our heritage.”

Louisiana has already spent about one billion {dollars} restoring barrier islands, together with two-and-a-half miles of shoreline alongside Pelican Island simply south of Jurisich’s oyster leases.

“A few third of this island is all that was left.”

In the present day, he mentioned, the island gives a level of safety for the oyster beds, calming the waters from the Gulf.

“We harvest oysters proper as much as the island now.”

Supporters of the diversion level out the state devotes billions of {dollars} in its Coastal Grasp Plan to dredging, and tasks to ship sediment by pipe to revive islands and marsh. Nevertheless, they argue dredging is not going to change the dynamics that acquired Louisiana into this mess. The delta, disconnected from the river, is quickly subsiding.

“Will issues be completely different sooner or later? Completely,” mentioned Bren Haase, Govt Director of the Louisiana Coastal Safety and Restoration Authority. “Will they be completely different sooner or later for the oyster trade with out this undertaking? Completely.”

CPRA argues Louisiana’s coastal points, the lack of an space the dimensions of Delaware since 1932, started when man locked the river in levees.

“It is a second that has been many years within the making,” mentioned CPRA Chairman Chip Kline.

Mid-Barataria will construct and keep extra land than every other coastal undertaking, Kline argued.

“That is, primarily, recreating the pure course of that constructed the state of Louisiana to start with.”

The state plans an analogous, barely smaller, undertaking on the east financial institution of the river.

Downriver from the proposed Mid-Breton Diversion, the Mississippi has damaged via its financial institution in a number of areas, together with Mardi Gras Cross and Neptune Cross.

Whereas many coastal activists level to lush, inexperienced, thriving new deltas, oyster growers see catastrophe.

“500,000 acres on the east financial institution of the river that was essentially the most pristine oyster-growing areas within the state are actually dormant,” Jurisich mentioned.

The undertaking could be funded via fines and settlements related to the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

The fee estimate contains $378 million in mitigation to offset a few of the projected hurt, akin to harm to business fisheries.

$26 million for the oyster trade particularly would come with the seeding of latest public oyster grounds in locations farther from the diversion web site.

“We already know we’re going to really feel impacts far past what they’re estimating,” Jurisich mentioned.

The state vows to work with oyster growers and others impacted to make sure they will keep in enterprise.

“The advantages of this undertaking in our minds far outweigh the impacts,” Kline mentioned.

Whereas smaller diversions exist already, critics level out that nothing like this has been tried on this scale.

Nathan Jurisich sees it as experimenting along with his future.

“We don’t know precisely how this diversion will work and that’s the factor I’ve an issue with.”

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