Category Archives: Congress

Could Storm Resilience Provisions Strengthen School Retrofits Bill?

By | Bio | Published: August 16, 2011

A construction worker puts the finishing touches on a painting project in New Orleans. While home repairs have been a popular focus for community groups along the Gulf Coast, retrofits of schools and other community facilities are also of vital importance to the region (Source: Flickr (jakeliefer))

Think Washington has been late to the game when it comes to lowering unemployment? Turns out you aren’t alone. Gallup polling has revealed that more than half of all American voters want their elected officials to focus on job creation rather than deficit reduction after the August recess.

At present, more than 25 million people– equivalent to 16% of the domestic labor force – are unemployed, underemployed in part-time positions, or so discouraged that they have given up looking for jobs altogether. Out of that group, nearly 1.5 million are people who formerly worked in the construction sector. Thousands of these unemployed painters, plumbers, roofers and technicians live in Gulf Coast metropolitan areas like Pascagoula and Pensacola that experienced construction booms (followed by busts) during the last decade.

Fortunately, some Beltway insiders are finally taking notice. One idea that has attracted attention is legislation to create a $50 billion program for school retrofits that will be introduced this fall by Representative Jan Schakowsky of Illinois.

FAST, which stands for “Fix America’s Schools Today”, was crafted by the Chicago-area congresswoman and researchers from two Washington think tanks, the 21st Century School Fund and the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). The proposed initiative would focus on improving energy efficiency, air quality, and building safety at the nearly 100,000 school buildings scattered across America, and based on an estimated jobs/spending ratio of 9,000-10,000 building repair jobs per $1 billion, the program could create as many as 500,000 new positions in the construction industry. 

Few would argue against renovating classrooms, libraries, and cafeterias for America’s children, especially with a new school year just around the corner. The truth is that such repairs are long overdue. Though school buildings in Louisiana and other Sun Belt states are, on average, several years newer than their counterparts in the North and the Midwest, more than 50 percent of the educational facilities used by youngsters in the United States were constructed over four decades ago, according to the National Clearinghouse for Educational Facilities. Regardless of their location, many of these facilities are plagued with mold, equipped with inadequate handicap access, and hampered by other limitations. Unfortunately, as a result of state and local budget crises, most school districts have been unable to attend to these issues.

If Congress is finally going to address the long list of deferred maintenance projects at our nation’s schools, we think that it would make sense for bills like Congresswoman Schakowsky’s to include more explicit provisions for upgrades that would improve storm resilience at educational facilities. We need these structures to withstand windstorms, and if roofing, window, and wall repairs costing tens of thousands of dollars per facility could save a community millions of dollars in demolition and replacement costs, then we think that would be money well spent.

Big Buildings, Big Problems

Along with the local house of worship and the area department store, the school is often one of the largest buildings in a community. Yet despite their importance to economic and civic life, these three types of structures are often ill-equipped to deal with fierce winds from hurricanes and tornadoes. 

For example, many churches and supersized retail facilities are constructed with big windows and tall walls with long spans. Such structural characteristics make them especially vulnerable to destruction in violent windstorms. Moreover, big-box stores are often built without reinforced rooms to protect their customers and workers during tornadoes, so when storms do occur, as they did in Tuscaloosa and other Southern cities earlier this year, the toll can be devastating.

As a result, the school is often the last, best hope for shielding residents from storms. Unfortunately, when these houses of learning are tested by the whipping winds of an approaching twister or tropical storm, they typically fail miserably. During the Joplin tornado earlier this year, some of the Missouri city’s residents flocked to schools lacking proper safe rooms, leaving them exposed to the elements as buildings like the town high school shattered to pieces in the storm.

“Hope” among the ruins: After tornado winds ripped four of the six large letters off of Joplin High School’s nameplate and wrecked the building behind it, local residents taped an “H” before and an “E” after the remaining two letters to send an encouraging message to the battered community (Source: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers)

The Need for Congressional Consensus on Community Resilience

After events like the Joplin tornado and Hurricane Katrina, schools must often double as shelters, triage centers, or coordination points for aid distribution. In times of crisis, they become communal places to gather resources, share important information, and instill hope. For this reason, it is important for Republican and Democratic leaders to consider ways to improve school storm resilience in all American communities. FEMA now is working with hard-hit towns like Joplin, Missouri to make new and existing educational facilities more resilient to windstorms, but we shouldn’t wait for disasters to occur before committing more money to community protection.

If Congress is able to secure bipartisan support for a school retrofit program in the next several months, it should also prioritize efforts to make school buildings more resilient to storm damage. Not only would this program be a huge boon for the construction industry, it also would be a great step towards providing millions of Americans with safer shelters when disasters strike.

Also posted in FEMA, Hurricane Katrina, Multipliers, Storms, Targeted Jobs, Unemployment, Weatherization | Leave a comment

Summertime Blues for 700,000 Unemployed on Gulf Coast

By | Bio | Published: August 5, 2011

In nationwide Gallup surveys, August consistently ranks as one of the most popular months for taking a long vacation. It’s easy to see why. With school out of session and offices half-empty, more than a third of all American workers choose to spend some portion of the last full month of summer away from the daily grind.

Why, then, does this August feel different? Maybe it’s because a halting sense of lethargy that has settled on the labor markets of Louisiana and its neighboring states. Roughly 700,000 people in cities and towns along the Gulf Coast find themselves idling away August without the promise of a cubicle, a corner office, or a work counter to return to come September. These residents of Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas are part of a huge cohort of jobless Americans struggling to find gainful employment during one of the worst periods of job creation in decades.

Late last month, Jeremy Proville, a Geographic Information System (GIS) specialist who works for Environmental Defense Fund, helped us to create a map that vividly depicts unemployment on the Gulf Coast. The red wedges on the respective pie charts show the share of unemployed persons in each of the respective cities, and the area of each pie chart corresponds to the size of the metro area’s labor force. Thus, the biggest circles sit over the Houston metropolitan area (with just under 3 million people in its pool of employed and unemployed persons), the Tampa metropolitan area (with just under 1.3 million people in its labor force), and the New Orleans metropolitan area (with about 550,000 people in its pool of current and potential workers).

Unemployment in Gulf Coast metropolitan areas, May 2011. The bar charts show jobless rates in five cities – Houston, New Orleans, Gulfport, Mobile, and Tampa – in May 2010 and May 2011 (Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics)

While the unemployed are concentrated in the biggest cities, it’s interesting the note that some of the highest unemployment rates are found in smaller urban centers like Beaumont, Texas and Cape Coral, Florida (see below chart for data on nineteen Gulf Coast metropolitan areas). Unlike a metropolis such as Houston, these mid-sized cities are often more dependent on one or two economic sectors. This leaves them particularly vulnerable to prolonged downturns if a critical, local industry like energy extraction (in the case of Beaumont) or real estate development (in the case of Cape Coral) suffers a severe shock.

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

Though the labor market data presented above is from May 2011, there has been little to no progress on reducing unemployment in the few months since then. If anything, it’s likely that the fraction of unemployed people in the region actually has risen over the past several weeks.

This joblessness isn’t just a personal issue; it’s also a cause for community concern. People who are unemployed–or earning a little income here and there–probably would lack the resources to evacuate their homes if a hurricane came barreling towards the coast. In addition, they might have fewer means of getting money to rebuild if a storm surge leveled their houses and destroyed all their possessions. Six summers ago, we saw the devastating impact that Hurricane Katrina and levee failures had on poor communities of the central Gulf Coast, but thousands of area families remain at risk if disasters of similar magnitude were to strike again this August.

What, then – if anything – will help the cities of the region to overcome these challenges? For starters, we could put thousands of people to work on projects that would restore the Gulf Coast’s ecosystems, especially its wetlands. We also could commit the necessary resources to improve community resilience by investing heavily in hazard mitigation. In fact, if you juxtapose our unemployment map with the coastal vulnerability index chart that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) distributed in its latest Gulf of Mexico report, you clearly can see why coastal protection would be a smart bet for regional urban centers like Galveston and New Orleans. These paired strategies – ecosystem restoration and economic resilience – would be tremendously important for protecting existing job centers on the Gulf Coast, given the concentration of heavy industry and infrastructure along the shores of the five state region.

To that end, Environmental Defense Fund has been working diligently to sketch out how restoration should proceed in the Mississippi River Delta and other sections of the coast. Earlier this week, our organization even submitted recommendations for restoration strategies to the White House in a report we co-authored with six other non-profits. We suggested small-scale proposals, including barrier island and oyster reef restoration, as well as mammoth sediment diversions to rebuild the fragile fabric of the Gulf Coast’s littoral wetlands. In addition, we’ve been collaborating actively with members of the Senate to secure the necessary funds for implementing a transformative environmental restoration program on the Gulf Coast.

Of course, we’ll have to wait until September (at the earliest) before the Senate and the House of Representatives commit a dollar of BP’s fines or a dollop of river sediment towards bettering the environment and the economy of the Gulf Coast.

After all, members of Congress need their August breaks too. 

Also posted in Analysis, BP Oil Disaster, CWPPRA, Demographics, Green Jobs, Regional Economic Development, Stimulus, Targeted Jobs, Unemployment | Leave a comment

How the RESTORE Act Could Kickstart Job Growth Along the Gulf Coast

By | Bio | Published: July 27, 2011

A Sign of the Times: A fenced-off construction site fends off jobseekers in New Orleans. Unemployed residents of the Gulf Coast are finding it hard to secure work opportunities as a jobs drought continues into its fourth year (Source: Flickr (Editor B))

This summer, most Americans beyond the Beltway have not been spending their days dwelling over the merits and faults of “cut, cap, and balance” or the nuances of loophole adjustments in the “Gang of Six” plan. Instead, they have been waiting for Democrats and Republicans to shift their attention from the debt ceiling and deficit reduction to a subject that has seemingly fallen off of Washington’s radar: jobs.

True, politicians on the left and the right have mentioned improved prospects for job creation in their respective arguments for tax reform and spending cuts. But the apparent lack of progress on actually tackling joblessness in Louisiana and other states has forced concerned observers in academia, business, government, and the nonprofit sector to sound the alarm for more urgent action on unemployment.

On July 17, Meet the Press host David Gregory assembled a leadership panel to discuss the challenges facing the American economy.  Joblessness was the top concern voiced by Marc Morial, a former mayor of New Orleans who currently serves as head of the National Urban League.  Morial said that the United States needs a robust new “jobs plan” to get its sluggish economy moving again. Though the U.S. is now in its second year of a post-recession expansion, the persistently high rate of unemployment has continued to hammer households and hinder consumer confidence.

We can see why struggling industrial centers in the Northeast or hard-hit cities in the Southwest might need a “jobs plan,” but is that a necessary prescription for Louisiana and its neighbors? Let’s look at some employment data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and economic ratios for wetland restoration work to see why a localized job creation initiative that emphasizes environmental rehabilitation could be great for the Gulf Coast.

A Cap on the Well, But No Lid on the Unemployment Rate

A year after the capping of the Deepwater Horizon well, the states ringing the spill zone have had some admitted economic successes. Despite the worst fears, signs of economic revival have appeared in different pockets of the region. For example, non-farm payrolls in the Houma-Bayou Cane-Thibodaux metropolitan area reportedly rose by 5,300 between January 2011 and June 2011, equivalent to a 5.9% jump in the number of employed workers for that section of the Mississippi River Delta.

There have been broader signs of recovery as well. For example, the recreation sector – an important source of jobs in the five-state region – has been benefiting from an unexpected uptick in visitors, as budget-conscious travelers and their families forego foreign excursions for beach trips to Galveston, Gulfport, and Grand Isle.

But despite this encouraging news, the shadows of the spill and the effects of the Great Recession continue to cloud prospects for employment growth. Seasonally-adjusted unemployment numbers for nineteen metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) adjacent to or on the Gulf of Mexico show that while some metro areas reported declines in unemployment between May 2010 and May 2011, most did not. In fact, six of the MSAs closest to the Deepwater Horizon site – Mobile, Alabama; Houma-Bayou Cane-Thibodaux, Lake Charles, and New Orleans-Metairie-Kenner, Louisiana; and Gulfport-Biloxi and Pascagoula, Mississippi – saw increases in unemployment of 0.3% or more over the twelve-month period.

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

Even in Gulf Coast MSAs where jobless rates fell, unemployment levels in May 2011 remained high. For example, in the Pensacola-Ferry Pass-Brent metropolitan area in northwestern Florida, the jobless rate fell by 0.5% from May 2010 to May 2011, but the unemployment rate in late spring 2011 (9.8%) was still 0.7% above the national average of 9.1%.

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

While Texas was less directly affected by the oil spill due to circulation patterns in the Gulf of Mexico, it too witnessed rising unemployment in its coastal cities, with four of the six metro areas surveyed reporting jobless rate increases between May 2010 and May 2011.

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

Overall, we find that the total number of unemployed people in the nineteen Gulf Coast metropolitan areas fell by just under 7,000 people during the twelve-month period from May ’10 to May ’11, largely due to big declines in unemployment in Florida cities like Tampa and Cape Coral. Still, such news provides cold comfort for the more than 680,000 people who remain unemployed in the major metropolitan areas of this region. Furthermore, the figures presented do not include the tens of thousands of unemployed people in rural counties and parishes that aren’t lumped into the U.S. Census Bureau’s subset of metropolitan sampling zones. And when we consider how severe the unemployment crisis remains in areas closest to the spill (the New Orleans MSA had the biggest increase in unemployed persons (May 2010 – May 2011 change: +5,976) of all the metro areas examined), it becomes clear that the Gulf Coast needs to redouble its efforts on creating jobs.

But what sort of program could quickly get people working in Brownsville, Biloxi, and Bayou Cane? Is there a silver bullet that will bring unemployment in Pensacola and Pass Christian to its knees? We think the answer might lie in ecosystem restoration.

Why the RESTORE Act Would Help Economic Recovery

The entire Gulf Coast is facing severe environmental challenges. We have already referred to the Mississippi River Delta’s land loss crisis throughout our blog, but there are other estuaries and coastal habitats like Apalachicola Bay and the Sabine River wetlands that will also need heavy investment in restoration work. Integrated within these efforts is a need to rehabilitate the Gulf of Mexico, whose marine life has been adversely affected by the loss of wetland breeding grounds, the increase of nitrate and phosphate flow through thinned coastal marshes, and the release of oil and dispersants during last year’s spill.

Source: Flickr (Steve Rhodes)

We could ameliorate the situation right now – and improve the long-term sustainability of cities, infrastructure and industries ringing the Gulf of Mexico – by putting people to work on efforts to revive wetlands, rebuild oyster reefs and restore barrier islands. Previous efforts at economic stimulus did not do enough to fix the situation, meaning that there is a long list of projects to complete all along the Gulf Coast.

In coastal Louisiana, expedited construction of important river diversions at Myrtle Grove and other sites could create hundreds of jobs for engineers, scientists, and contractual laborers. In Alabama, dozens of people could be put to work on shoring up sand dunes near Fort Gaines, a historic site on Dauphin Island that could crumble into the sea because of coastal erosion. Further afield in places like Florida, local residents could replant mangrove swamps and reseed degraded salt marshes. Per $1 million invested, these efforts often generate more jobs than traditional regional sectors like energy extraction, and because many of them require minimal training, these programs could immediately employ thousands of jobless people regardless of skill level.

How the long-term jobs plan will take shape remains to be seen. It might involve a mix of tax credits, corporate investment, federal funding, and private initiative. It will certainly require innovative partnerships between government bureaus along the Gulf Coast and universities and research institutes scattered around the region. However, in the short term, the prospect of potentially transformative funding from BP’s Clean Water Act penalties should serve as a catalyst for community action on shaping these proposals and sketching out what they will entail.

Some of that work is already taking place in Louisiana. Part of the $1 billion in early action NRDA payments from BP will soon be put to use on several dozen environmental projects in the Pelican State, and the news last Thursday that a bipartisan coalition of nine Gulf Coast senators was now cosponsoring the RESTORE Act heralded hope that a huge stream of funds, large enough to address the twin problems of economic growth and environmental recovery in this battered region, would finally be reaching businesses from the Florida Keys to the Rio Grande.

Others have discussed the idea of green jobs in Gulf Coast restoration before, and last year’s spill provided a dry run for an environmental jobs program when BP hastily hired thousands of area residents for temporary cleanup work. Now, without the duress of an immediate environmental catastrophe like the Deepwater Horizon explosion, we have the opportunity to thoughtfully address the bigger issues facing the region and implement a well-executed plan to save it.

We need Congress to pass the RESTORE Act, but it won’t happen without your help. We hope that by sharing this post with your colleagues and friends, you will spread the message that investing billions in ecosystem restoration would be a great way to help the Gulf Coast’s environment and to get its people back to work.

Also posted in Analysis, BP Oil Disaster, Demographics, Green Jobs, Oil Spill, Regional Economic Development, Stimulus, Targeted Jobs, The White House, Unemployment, Wetlands | Leave a comment

Demography and Disaster: Could Post-Katrina Shifts in Mississippi River Delta Population Shape the Scope of Coastal Restoration?

By | Bio | Published: June 29, 2011

No Lines Here: In this March 2008 photo, an empty parking lot sits in front of a derelict shopping center in Chalmette, Louisiana (Source: Flickr (Saul Tannenbaum))

Tumbleweeds aren’t typically found in Louisiana, but you’d be forgiven for thinking you saw one if you drove through St. Bernard Parish recently. Sitting just east of New Orleans, the area, which was home to nearly 67,000 residents in 2001, now hosts about half as many people as it did ten years ago. In some communities, semi-deserted streets are lined with boarded-up homes, and tall grasses grow wild in unkempt yards.

The depopulation problem extends well beyond the parish line. In fact, based on information from the Population Estimate Program—a division of the U.S. Census Bureau—the population of the seven parishes in the New Orleans metropolitan area in 2010 was 11.3% smaller than it had been in 2000.

Curiously, the population losses have not been random. Indeed, coastal Louisiana’s residents appear to be moving toward parishes at higher average elevations and away from parishes closer to sea level that had been devastated by storm surges and levee failures after Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita hit the region in 2005.

What are the implications of this uneven rise and fall? Let’s consider them in this post.

A PEP Talk

Each year, the Population Estimates Program (PEP) of the U.S. Census Bureau publishes demographic reports on the nation, its 50 states, and over 3,000 counties and county-equivalent jurisdictions scattered across America. The reference date for these annual figures is July 1.

As we approached the end of June, we decided to take a look at population numbers for the past decade in the Mississippi River Delta to see how demographic shifts could influence wetland restoration and hazard mitigation priorities in the region. We focused on seven parishes (Jefferson, Orleans, Plaquemines, St. Bernard, St. Charles, St. John the Baptist, and St. Tammany) that are considered part of the New Orleans Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA). Together, they are home to about 1.2 million of the roughly 1.5 million people who live in the wetland parishes of southeastern Louisiana.

2000-2010 changes in parish population (Year 2000 population = 100) and mean elevation by parish (Sources: Association of Environmental and Engineering Geologists; Greater New Orleans Community Data Center; Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals; United States Census Bureau; United States Geological Survey)

We can glean some important demographic information from the above graphs. First, we see that while there were some differences in growth trajectories during the first half of the 2000s, the overall population of the region remained pretty steady. We start to see big deviations from the Year 2000 population numbers when we look at the demographic figures for July 2006, the first year after the storms, levee failures, and floods of 2005. After these disasters, the gap between the parishes that gained in population and those that shrunk grew wider. While the number of people living in some parishes increased by as much as 22% between 2000 and 2010, the decline in population in the region’s biggest parishes led to an 11.3% drop in the cumulative residential tally for the seven-parish region.

Second, it is interesting to note that the population distribution of the region appears to be shifting to higher ground, a trend that has been noted before in real estate journals and other publications. For example, the PEP estimated that the residential population of St. Charles Parish, which sits at an average elevation of 21 feet above sea level, rose steadily from 48,072 in July 2000 to 52,780 in July 2010, yielding a 2000-2010 increase of 9.79%. In contrast, the population of Plaquemines Parish, which sits at an average elevation of 6 feet above sea level, rose slightly from 26,757 in 2000 to 28,549 in 2005, plunged sharply to 21,293 in 2006, and rebounded slowly from its post-Katrina low to 23,042 in July 2010, equivalent to a 13.88% decline in population over the ten-year period.

If You (Re)build It, Will They Come Back?

The thinning population of places like St. Bernard Parish poses challenges for regional planners and state officials as they work to restore the delta and rebuild its economy. For instance, how will Louisiana source workers for wetland restoration projects? If commuters are living dozens of miles from the coast, what provisions will need to be made to transport these workers to and from sites near the sea? What measures should be taken to preserve historic towns and hamlets that are shrinking for lack of new residents? Might state and federal observers express more interest in protecting certain parts of the Mississippi River Delta as opposed to others based on population density and other demographic factors? How should Louisiana invest hazard mitigation funds to best shield its residents from subsidence and sea level rise?

The demographic decline also poses a challenge for our country. The United States needs Louisiana-based fishermen to harvest seafood from the waterways of the Mississippi River Delta and the Gulf of Mexico. Our nation also depends on thousands of local engineers to keep critical oil and gas facilities functioning throughout southeastern Louisiana. In addition, America’s transportation sector would face crippling shutdowns without the thousands of Louisiana dockworkers, boat pilots, and logistics managers who maintain the ports, warehouses, and shipping facilities lining the lower reaches of the Mississippi River. When these people are displaced, even temporarily, the impact ripples throughout agricultural and energy markets, and our nation’s economy suffers as a consequence. The hit that would come from a more permanent abandonment of portions of the Mississippi River Delta could be devastating for Louisiana, its neighbors, and America as a whole.

We’ll have to wait until next year to see the Census Bureau’s estimates for the July 2011 population of these seven parishes. Between now and then, far-reaching choices will be made about funding for environmental work in the region and the roll-out of restoration initiatives. The charts in this post vividly illustrate why disaster management and long-term planning are so important in this low-lying region. Numerous government officials have visited Louisiana and made promises to help its people recover from Katrina, Rita, Gustav and other recent disasters. But these pledges have not translated into game-changing progress on hazard mitigation and coastal restoration, as borne out by the population trends shown above.

Our nation cannot dither on these commitments any longer. We must make every effort to prevent southern Louisiana from slipping into an inexorable population slump by committing the necessary resources to secure its environmentally-sensitive delta and shore up its endangered communities.

Also posted in Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority (CPRA), CWPPRA, Demographics, Hurricane Katrina, Regional Economic Development, Storms, Wetlands | Leave a comment

Could House Budget Cuts Hobble Habitat Recovery in Coastal Louisiana?

By | Bio | Published: March 24, 2011

by J.P. Leous

Shortly after our blog debuted last February, we began writing about proposals to employ the elderly and others in the restoration and preservation of Louisiana’s wild spaces.

What a difference a year makes. Thirteen months on, the conversation has shifted from conservation to cutbacks. Political changes in Washington have prompted new calls for budget cuts at the federal level, putting initiatives that protect habitat on the chopping block. Rather than thinking of new environmental programs to implement, conservation advocates are trying to save existing ones from elimination.

What could this mean for the wetlands of Louisiana? We spoke recently with J.P. Leous, a blogger on climate change and land management at The Wilderness Society. In this post, he shares some of his thoughts on how these budget proposals could affect the wildlife of the Pelican State and the workers who depend on them.

We Are the Champions: Kevin VanDam, the victor at the 2011 Bassmaster Classic, smiles with his family after receiving the tournament trophy in New Orleans. The other big winner from the fishing tournament was the state of Louisiana, whose outdoor economy received a boost from the widely-televised event. The future of sport fishing in southern Louisiana could be imperiled if severe cuts to conservation funding affect habitats critical to the region’s aquatic life (Source: ESPN)

If you like to fish, you might have caught part of the 2011 Bassmaster Classic last month on ESPN. For the fourth time in its 29-year history, the tournament was held in the Mississippi River Delta. Louisiana wasn’t chosen for this bass-fishing bonanza because of the charms of Bourbon Street. Instead, it was the waters of the Pelican State that attracted anglers to the event.

The burst of biological riches in these bays, rivers, and streams is largely due to the wetland ecosystems that emerge at the juncture of the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico. This network of marshes and swamps provides important habitat for striped bass and other marine life. In turn, these organisms support a rich web of waterfowl and other wildlife that thrive in the “sportsman’s paradise” that is coastal Louisiana.

It’s a pity then that these wetlands, important as they are to the outdoor tourism economy of southern Louisiana, are vanishing. The Louisiana coast is disappearing fast due to land loss, a problem that could worsen due to sea level rise from climate change. Even in areas far removed from the shore, pollution and land-use policies threaten the long-term survival of wetlands critical to Louisiana’s native species.

The fate of coastal Louisiana will ultimately hinge on efforts to reconnect the Mississippi River with the delta that it built over thousands of years. The restoration of Louisiana’s coastal wetlands will in part be accomplished through the construction of river diversions and other large projects that would increase the rate of sedimentation and land accretion in the Mississippi River Delta. Past sessions of Congress have repeatedly failed to budget the funding needed to save this beleaguered environment. While Congress must still provide federal funding for Louisiana’s large-scale restoration program, critical projects could be expedited by Clean Water Act funding from oil spill penalties, which could yield billions of dollars for ecosystem restoration on the Gulf Coast.

Though the existing programs for wetland protection and wildlife conservation are far smaller in scope, they serve as important parallel projects to the ongoing effort to save southern Louisiana. In the short run, these initiatives provide employment for local people in invasive species control and other environmental fields, while in the long run, they act as useful ways to train people for the sorts of green jobs that will be required as habitats and wild spaces are restored across Louisiana’s coastal zone.

There’s no shortage of work needed if Louisiana’s treasured landscapes and communities are to remain resilient in a warming world. Taking on these short-term and long-term challenges would be a win-win for the economy and the environment, as investments in climate-smart conservation would create jobs today and protect valuable natural assets for tomorrow. Sound public policy on wetland restoration, wildlife protection, and land management is thus critical for the continued success of bass fishing, bird-watching, and other nature-dependent sectors in southern Louisiana.

Slash and Burn

That’s why the recent news from Washington on budget cuts for nature conservation should prompt concern in Louisiana. If the large cuts outlined in the House-passed appropriations bill (H.R. 1) were to pass in the Senate, much of this important work would take a huge step backward.  H.R. 1 takes a meat cleaver to programs that most have never heard of, but from which almost all of us benefit. Such cuts are truly penny-wise and pound-foolish, because addressing environmental maintenance only gets more expensive the longer we wait.

Congressional sunset: The Capitol Building at twilight on a March evening (Source: Flickr (kevharb))

Think of it this way: imagine trying to remove a few weeds from your garden when you see the first signs of trouble. Not too difficult, right? But it’s a different story if you wait until they take over. Now scale that up to hundreds of millions of acres and dozens of exotic and invasive species, and you are starting to get your head around what public land managers are facing.

And if you think these cuts won’t hit your favorite places, think again.  If you’re from the Midwest, you’ve probably benefited directly from the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative. That program would take a $250 million cut, equivalent to 53% of its FY 2010 budget, in the proposed spending bill. Similar programs from San Francisco Bay to Long Island Sound would also face multi-million dollar cuts, resulting in fewer jobs dedicated to preserving these important areas. Other proposed cuts include slashing nearly $49 million from the Department of Interior’s programs to prepare for climate-driven disruptions, eliminating all funding for the Forest Legacy Program (crucial to restoring key forest ecosystems), and prohibiting NOAA from spending any funds to understand the science of climate change.

Oh, and the State and Tribal Wildlife Grant Program, which protects wild habitats and keeps threatened creatures off the endangered species list? Yeah, that was zeroed out in H.R. 1, as was the North American Wetlands Conservation Fund (NAWCF), which leverages federal and non-federal funds to preserve bird habitat.

Workers and Wildlands

Keep in mind that these cuts wouldn’t just hurt wildlife — they would also hit our wallets. Healthy wildlands contribute billions in valuable ecosystem services each year.  Clean air is dependent on healthy forests, and clean water is dependent on healthy wetlands and headwater streams.  These natural spaces also directly support active outdoor recreation, which generates 6.5 million jobs and contributes roughly $730 billion dollars to our national economy each year.

Over the past decade, Louisiana has been a direct beneficiary of several programs slated for cuts. For example, the Fish and Wildlife Service granted Ducks Unlimited $1 million in NAWCF grants last September to restore important wetlands on the Mississippi Flyway. This money created jobs for people in fifteen Louisiana parishes and was used to preserve critical habitats for migratory birds. If the North American Wetlands Conservation Fund was eliminated, this stream of funding and others like it would evaporate, along with employment opportunities for dozens of part-time and full-time workers in the coastal zone.

Considering the problems posed by climate change, the economic downturn, and last year’s oil spill, it seems wise to continue funding labor-intensive upgrades to Louisiana’s green infrastructure. Per dollar invested, conservation projects can create and protect more jobs than many other economic sectors while also helping to preserve the wetlands that are so important to Louisiana’s economy. From tackling invasive species to restoring cypress swamps, there are projects in communities across the Pelican State that we should implement as soon as possible. These projects create jobs for Louisiana residents, improve their public health, and buffer area communities against future climate disruptions. Taking on these challenges now will save money in the long run.

Think to yourself: Would Louisiana’s wetlands be the same without the wildlife that are integral to their health and well-being? Could the state remain a sportsman’s paradise if its habitat for waterfowl and fish disappeared due to neglect and lax oversight?

No one is doubting that America faces fiscal challenges, but it also has environmental and employment issues to deal with, too. Given the projected scale of climate disruptions and the fact that they don’t recognize land designations and property lines, landscape-level approaches will be necessary. Such initiatives, tailored to acknowledge the importance of economic development and environmental health, will also translate into employment growth. Private collaboration and commitment will be an important part of this process, but we still need public funding and support to ensure that these programs succeed.

All eyes are now focused on the fate of the Clean Water Act penalties, a potentially huge stream of money that would be transformative for wetland restoration efforts on the Gulf Coast. But at the same time, we shouldn’t lose sight of the smaller pools of conservation funding that are already being used to create jobs in the wetlands of coastal Louisiana.

Earlier this month, the Senate voted to reject the current version of the House-passed bill, giving Democrats and Republicans an opportunity to reexamine the proposed cuts to habitat protection and restoration initiatives. Thoughtfully pruning and paring down their budgets may be a necessary course of action in this time of fiscal austerity, but the wholesale weed-whacking of conservation programs that benefit Louisiana’s wildlife and workers would leave both worse off.

J.P. Leous is the Climate Change Policy Advisor at The Wilderness Society. In addition, he serves as a lecturer at The George Washington University’s School of Public Health and Health Services. J.P. focuses on natural resource adaptation and other issues related to climate and wildlands policy. An alumnus of the Peace Corps, J.P. graduated from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), where he co-founded the Award for Progressive Sustainability. Follow J.P. on Twitter @TWSjp.

Also posted in External Media, Fish, Guest Post, Recreation, Targeted Jobs, Tourism, Water, Wetlands, Wildlife | Leave a comment

What Are You Doing for World Wetlands Day?

By | Bio | Published: February 2, 2011

While the limelight may be focused on Punxsutawney Phil and his Pennsylvania burrow, February 2nd isn’t just about groundhogs. The second day of the second month of the year is also special because of its significance for wetlands.

On this date in 1971, delegates from eighteen nations signed a “Convention on Wetlands of International Importance” in Ramsar, an Iranian city on the southern shore of the Caspian Sea. In 1987, the Ramsar Convention came into force for the United States, and ten years later, the U.S. joined dozens of other countries to celebrate the first World Wetlands Day, timed to coincide with the anniversary of the Ramsar Convention signing ceremony.

Today, there are 160 contracting parties to the Ramsar Convention, which establishes guiding protocols for the conservation and sustainable use of wetland habitats around the world. Wetlands cover about 6% of the Earth's surface, and serve as important ecosystems for plants and animals, including humans. Many of the world's earliest civilizations – including Sumer and Egypt – arose in the fertile deltas of major rivers, and even today, some of the world's largest cities, including Shanghai and Calcutta, lie in regions formed by sediment deposition.

Like other natural areas, wetlands are under threat due to human actions and climate change. In the United States, the Mississippi River Delta constitutes one of the largest expanses of wetlands, but the marshes and swamps of this region could disappear due to inaction on coastal restoration.

For that reason, we want you to get involved in EDF’s campaign for coastal Louisiana. This involves contacting your Senators and Representatives about the importance of wetland restoration in the Pelican State. At present, there are proposals in the House and the Senate to use eighty percent of the oil spill penalties – which could amount to billions of dollars – for wetland preservation and enhancement on the Gulf Coast. This money could dramatically impact the fortunes of this beleaguered ecosystem by providing a steady stream of funding for the comprehensive rehabilitation of the Mississippi River Delta.

Saving southern Louisiana will demand the construction of sediment diversions and other infrastructure to restart the natural processes that built the delta. These projects will cost money, but they will also provide a chance for Louisiana to protect its environment and rebuild its economy. The opportunity cost of inaction would be too great to bear, especially since the worst forecasts show much of Louisiana disappearing by 2100 without urgent work to preserve its coast.

So, rather than wondering whether a woodchuck saw his shadow this morning, take a moment today to think about wetlands in your community and around the world. If you have any thoughts on how you might preserve and protect these places, let us know by sharing your ideas in the comment box.

Also posted in Events, International, Water, Wetlands | Leave a comment

Point of Consensus: Why Gulf Coast Restoration Should Be a Priority for Republicans and Democrats in Congress

By | Bio | Published: December 6, 2010

After the Deepwater Horizon explosion in April, the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico dominated headlines (and Internet traffic) for months. As 2010 draws to a close, many wonder whether Congress will pass legislation to direct BP's Clean Water Act penalties towards restoration of areas affected by the spill (Sources: Associated Press, Flickr (Greenpeace USA 2010, SkyTruth), United States Senate)

On December 1st, Yahoo! published its list of the top ten searches of 2010. Can you guess what was ranked first?

The BP oil spill. Yep, it beat out the World Cup (#2), Kim Kardashian (#4), and perennial search crown contender Britney Spears (#10) to emerge as the subject that Yahoo!’s 631 million users mulled over most while browsing the net this year.

That's no small feat, either.  Despite the media’s hyper-focus on the midterm elections and saturation coverage of reality TV, it was the BP oil disaster, with its spillover effects on the environment and economy of the Gulf region, that captured more attention than any other subject on one of America’s most popular websites.  It marked the first time ever that a news story topped Yahoo's year-end list.

Unfortunately for the Gulf, search engine titles don’t dictate business in the U.S. Senate.  Despite the surge of domestic interest in environmental rehabilitation and corporate responsibility stemming from the spill, the upper house of Congress seems unable to match this buzz with commensurate action to protect and restore the Gulf Coast.  A bill designed to improve drilling standards, with thoughtful provisions to maintain the competitiveness of America’s energy industry, passed successfully in the House of Representatives this summer but stalled in the Senate.  More recently, provisions to dedicate oil spill penalties to Gulf restoration that were included in the House-passed bill in July have failed to capture the attention of a fractured and divided chamber.  This comes despite recommendations from Navy Secretary Ray Mabus (in his commission’s post-spill report) for Congress to create a Gulf Coast Recovery Fund with a "significant amount" of BP fine money.   Meanwhile, the Gulf of Mexico remains damaged, its coastlines continue to erode, its wildlife stays vulnerable, and its fishing and tourism sectors remain on life support.

One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish

Why should we accept this lack of action as a given?  I mean, do bluegills or redfish swimming in polluted waters know (or care) about Senate procedure?  How does one explain a “lame-duck” session to shorebirds sickened by oil pollution?

It is past time for politicians from both parties to unite on comprehensive rehabilitation of the Gulf Coast. Wetland restoration, water quality improvement, and wildlife protection aren’t just important values in “blue state” beach towns on Cape Cod or the California coast.  If Democrats and Republicans can respect the will of Gulf Coast voters and show that economic recovery and ecosystem restoration can go hand-in-hand in one of the country’s “reddest” regions, they will demonstrate to naysayers that environmental protection is a priority for all Americans, regardless of their political stripes.

Red, White, and Blue: In a September 2010 survey of Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas residents, 72% (+/- 2.2%) of respondents said they'd be more likely to vote for federal legislators who support new investments in Gulf Coast restoration (Sources: Bellwether Research and Consulting, Lake Research Partners, The Walton Family Foundation)

Blogging About the Bills

Towards that end, we’re participating in a Nature Blog Network initiative to bolster public support for spill bill passage in the Senate.  Ideally, such a bill would dedicate the lion’s share of BP’s Clean Water Act (CWA) penalties to cleaning up the waters and wetlands of the Gulf Coast.

We applaud Louisiana’s congressional delegates for taking the lead in advancing these efforts.  Representative Steve Scalise (R-LA) sponsored the Gulf Coast Restoration Act, which would give at least 80 percent of the CWA fine money to the states impacted by the spill.  Similarly, Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) has sponsored a Senate bill, the Restoring Ecosystem Sustainability and Protection on the Delta (RESPOND) Act, which calls for no less than 80 percent of the BP CWA financial penalties to be used for “long-term economic and environmental recovery” on the Gulf Coast.

Given EDF’s consistent efforts to support restoration of the Mississippi River Delta, we believe it is important for Congress to act quickly on the funding issue. The BP oil disaster brought attention to the degraded condition of the Gulf and its coast. The health of the delta is particularly important for the long-term recovery of the Gulf of Mexico, but over the past eighty years, more than 2,300 square miles of the Mississippi River Delta (equivalent to one-third of its pre-1930 area) disappeared due to land loss. Historic development of private and public infrastructure for national economic activity (including, but not limited to, the production, transportation, and processing of oil and gas) dramatically impacted salinity levels, sediment flows, and other determinants of wetland health. This erosion of coastal Louisiana, an environmental catastrophe in and of itself, has in turn affected the economic resilience of the region. For instance, the disappearance of coastal nurseries for marine life has impacted the fishing industry in Louisiana. In addition, the loss of deltaic wetlands has left portions of southern Louisiana (and much of the nation’s energy and shipping infrastructure) more exposed to storm surge damage from hurricanes.

While initiatives to reverse this land loss were authorized under sections 7002 and 7006 of the Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) of 2007, not all of the projects have received the requisite construction appropriations to move forward. This means that wetlands that could have been more resilient to spills were not restored prior to the Deepwater Horizon explosion, leaving Louisiana’s coast even more vulnerable to oil damage. Some scientists believe that without quick action to rebuild and restore the delta (action that could be expedited with CWA penalty funding), the land loss destroying coastal Louisiana could become irreversible within decades.

The Next Steps

Source: Flickr (artbymags)

Whether or not these bills will pass before the end of the 111th Congress is anyone’s guess.  But even if the legislation fails during the current session, there’s no reason why the 112th Congress should ignore these proposals when it convenes in January.

Conservatives might like the fact that this stream of potential restoration money doesn’t come from a new tax, or the fact that even if 80 percent of the $5-21 billion expected to be levied against BP were given to Louisiana and its neighbors, the Federal treasury would still be receiving as much as $1-4 billion for possible debt reduction.  Liberals might like the idea that billions are finally being used to remedy environmental damage in a region that has served as a source of fossil fuels for more than a century.  People from both parties will like the fact that money spent on restoring wetlands, analyzing air and water quality, and resuscitating threatened ecosystems will generate employment in one of America’s poorest regions, providing a boost to industries all along the Gulf Coast.

If you support this effort and wish to get involved, please contact your local congressional representatives via this Action Alert.  In this season of service, the minutes you give to write letters and e-mails could be critical in turning constituent chatter to congressional action.

Also posted in BP Oil Disaster, Oil Spill, Regional Economic Development, Water, Wetlands | Leave a comment

Could Ecosystem Restoration be a Driver for Gulf Coast Economic Recovery: A review of the Mabus Report

By | Published: October 21, 2010

Secretary Mabus, who was tapped by President Obama to develop a long term recovery plan for the Gulf Coast following the BP disaster, released his final report and recommendations late last month.  Because we're so keen on job creation and economic development (especially through restoration and resilience work) we took some time to review the Economic Recovery chapter and its recommendations.  Our main takeaway:  we felt that the Mabus Report missed out on an opportunity to emphasize the important role that environmental restoration must play in economic recovery of the Gulf Coast. By prioritizing wetland rehabilitation and community resilience projects especially in coastal Louisiana, the people, environment and economy of the gulf coast could emerge stronger from this crisis.

The commission did a great job addressing some of the background issues facing this region, summarized in the three points below:

1. The Gulf Coast is vital to the national economy and the vital economies of the gulf (which are "inextricably linked" to the Gulf ecosystem) were impacted by the spill. YES! YES! YES!  We couldn't have said this better ourselves (though we've tried many times before).  Understanding the unique economies, ingenuity and resources of the Gulf Coast, especially coastal Louisiana and their direct connection to the landscape is vital for creating a robust and resilient economic recovery.  In Coastal Louisiana oil and gas, fisheries, tourism and navigation are all huge economic drivers that depend on the ecosystem of the delta.  As we work to get those industries back up to full speed,  we should work to expand the economy through activities that restore the wetlands of the delta and enhance the very foundation of the gulf economy.

2.      Spill response is a unique challenge in each location of the gulf, with diverse problems and solutions. The spill has and continues to affect the entire gulf coast, in each location local challenges change the response, nowhere is this more true than the marshy coastline of Louisiana.  A century's worth of flood control, economic activity, infrastructure and control for navigation have pushed coastal Louisiana to the brink, now the oil spill heaps on a whole new set of challenges.  Clean up and restoration in Louisiana will mean wetland restoration using the processes of a delta:  fresh water and sediment introduction via river diversions, beneficial use of dredged material, sediment pipelines etc.  The Mabus report grasps the differences faced in Louisiana and calls for the creation of a Gulf Coast Ecosystem Restoration Task Force chaired by EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson.

3.      Strategies need to be driven by local ideas and communities of the gulf. The people of the gulf know their homes better than anyone, especially in the complex bayou communities of southern Louisiana where the landscape is in a constant state of change. Fisherman, shrimpers and local residents all have had a front row seat for wetland loss, and the destructive powers of hurricanes and now an oil spill.  Empowering local communities, local ingenuity and local decision making with the best science and technical assistance available for restoring the delta is an important  step in the decision making process.  

The report then presented five recommendations on how to spur economic recovery for the region:

1.  Compensation and income support for affected individuals and businesses

2.  Provide Economic and technical assistance for recovering communities to navigate federal, state and non-governmental resources and develop recovery plans

3.  Address public perception concerns and mitigate long-term reputational damage in the wake of the spill

4.  Support small business recovery

5.  Use the opportunity presented by the recovery effort to address longstanding economic and environmental challenges.

Our ears of course perked up to recommendation number five.  While the Mabus report delves explicitly into how Clean Water Act penalty dollars might be put towards funding export promotion, workforce training and promotion of a clean energy economy as opportunities for economic recovery in this chapter it doesn't call out environmental restoration as an explicit economic opportunity (it includes long-term environmental restoration as its own chapter and recommends the creation of a restoration task force) we'd be remiss if we didn't link the two. 

Environmental restoration IS economic recovery in the gulf coast, especially coastal Louisiana. What better way to put gulf coast residents to work than by moving fresh water and sediments into the wetlands of Louisiana through river diversions, beneficial use and sediment pipelines?  My colleague and main contributor to this blog, Seyi Fayanju, is continually making the case for job creation and economic expansion through restoration.  Whether it be direct hiring of pipelayers, marsh and cypress planters, nutria hunters, or hydrologists, restoration has the potential to spur job creation for the region.  And restoration work benefits the people, economies and infrastructure throughout the delta by providing natural hurricane defenses, enhancing hunting and fishing tourism and keeping a unique culture vibrant.

In addition to restoration work enhancing the resilience of homes and businesses to the effects of floods and hurricane storm surge could help a hurting construction sector.  The Mabus report suggests energy retrofits for homes and businesses in the gulf coast as a key economic boost, but expanding that directive into disaster mitigation efforts could create jobs and make the region safer to future storms.

We're excited to see that Secretary Mabus has developed this long-term plan to restore the Gulf Coast and make it better than it was before the BP oil disaster.  We'll keep looking for ways that restoration and resilience can grow the Gulf Coast economy, make residents safer and protect a national environmental treasure.

Also posted in BP Oil Disaster, Green Jobs, Regional Economic Development, The White House, Weatherization | Leave a comment

Has It Really Been Six Months?

By | Bio | Published: October 20, 2010

Fire on the water: Coast Guard vessels hose down the burning wreckage of Deepwater Horizon on April 21, the day after the accident that triggered the BP oil disaster (Source: United States Coast Guard)

Half a year has passed since the Deepwater Horizon explosion on April 20th. In the months that followed, the wetlands of southern Louisiana and the waters of the Gulf of Mexico were sullied by millions of barrels of crude oil from the Macondo well, and the region’s residents were forced to confront the myriad economic and environmental issues stemming from one of the biggest oil spills of all time.

The BP oil disaster brought much needed attention to the ecological challenges facing coastal Louisiana, a topic we had been discussing on our blog for months prior to the spill. However, there’s a sinking feeling that the capping of the well and the drafting of a recovery report have solved all the problems in the Gulf.

They haven’t, which is why we and others at the Environmental Defense Fund have been actively involved in efforts to shape the recovery and renewal of the Gulf Coast. On one of our sister blogs, Chief Oceans Scientist Doug Rader penned a fascinating series this past September about the environmental risks associated with ignoring the lingering effects of the spill on wildlife in the Gulf.

More recently, EDFers in our Washington office have been busy with efforts to secure BP’s Clean Water Act penalty payments for wetland restoration and other regenerative projects near the spill zone. Writing yesterday in The Hill, Paul Harrison, the director of EDF’s coastal Louisiana program, observed that Congress has yet to confirm whether BP’s penalties will be funneled into the Federal treasury or rightly diverted to a recovery fund for long-term restoration of the Gulf.

If you ask the people who lived through the trauma of the spill, they’ll confirm what we already know: Significant majorities of Democrats (82%), Republicans (67%), and Independents (67%) in areas affected by the BP oil disaster support federal and state involvement in comprehensive rehabilitation of the Gulf Coast.

Why should they be denied what they rightfully deserve? As we’ve stated before on our blog, ecosystem restoration has the potential to generate jobs and generate hope for the people of the Gulf Coast. As we pass the six-month milestone, we hope that decision makers and politicians from both parties will come together to ensure that the wetlands and waters of this region are made whole again.

Also posted in BP, BP Oil Disaster, Deepwater Horizon, Oil Spill | Leave a comment

White House Releases Preliminary Recovery Plan for the Gulf Coast

By | Bio | Published: September 29, 2010

Three months after President Obama pledged his commitment to Gulf Coast restoration in a June address from the Oval Office, the White House released a report yesterday that outlines recommendations for ecosystem restoration and economic recovery in the region affected by the BP oil spill. The paper was drafted by a working group led by Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, who once served as the Governor of Mississippi.

Several conference calls were held to coincide with the publication of America's Gulf Coast: A Long Term Recovery Plan After The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. Along with four other non-profits, the Environmental Defense Fund issued a press release on Tuesday that offered broad support for the central tenets of the Mabus report, including the creation of a Gulf Coast Ecosystem Restoration Task Force chaired by EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson.

By an overwhelming majority, residents of the Gulf Coast want their political leaders to deliver on the promise of environmental restoration. Still, the path to recovery is far from finished, as funding for the recommendations in the Mabus report has not yet been finalized in Congress.

In the next few days, we’ll be writing more about what this could mean for economic development and job creation in the coastal zone, but for now, we’d like to hear from you. Take a look through the report and send us your thoughts.

Also posted in BP Oil Disaster, Green Jobs, Oil Spill, Regional Economic Development, The White House | Leave a comment