Louisiana is focusing its hopes for restoring coastal wetlands that could help protect it from another Hurricane Katrina on an unexpected savior: oil.
Oil and the environment are rarely seen mixing well but the debate over how to pay for natural barriers that slow monster storms has moved into the Gulf of Mexico, where oil rigs can pump up to 1.5 million barrels of oil a day.
As the United States opens more of the gulf to drilling, Louisiana wants a bigger percentage of the oil royalty money that is split between states and the federal government. That, and more drilling, could let Louisiana pay what is estimated to be a $14 billion coastal restoration price tag.
“I am playing hardball,” Gov. Kathleen Blanco said in a weekend interview.
On Monday, Blanco said she would go to court to stop the federal sale in August of an oil lease in the Gulf of Mexico, barring a federal commitment to wetland restoration.
The U.S. House of Representatives already has passed a bill that would open up new deep-water areas of the gulf to oil drilling and give related royalties to the state, part of a larger plan to loosen restrictions on offshore production.
The U.S. Senate expects to vote this month on a less ambitious version focused on the gulf, and Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, visiting Louisiana Monday, said the administration supports the concept of revenue sharing, in a change of its view, but details would have to be worked out.
The Louisiana coast is melting away at the rate of a football field every 38 minutes. Now the Mississippi River is controlled by levees, land starved of the fresh water and silt that the flooding river used to provide now sinks into the gulf’s salt water, which kills the plants holding what soil is left, according to the group America’s Wetland.
Channels for pipelines have been cut through marshes, while most major oil companies have largely abandoned New Orleans for Houston, fueling a sense of resentment that Louisiana is not getting its share of the bounty.
That especially hurts at a time of record oil prices.
“The next deal won’t be good for America and bad for Louisiana,” said Mark Davis, executive director of the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana.
Hurricanes Katrina and Rita focused Louisiana on the need for land between key areas like New Orleans and warm gulf waters that feed storms’ power. Katrina caused havoc in Mississippi River shipping, the oil industry, fisheries, and in New Orleans, which was 80 percent flooded.
Scientists want to rebuild barrier islands, pump Mississippi water and mud dredged from the bottom of the river’s navigation channel into the wetlands, and allow some controlled flooding.
There are a number of potential sticking points to pending legislation. The Senate deal, which is expected to be voted on later this month, will not provide enough money for restoration in the short run, Blanco and other leaders agree.
The House bill would bring billions more to Louisiana sooner than the Senate deal but it would scrap a federal ban on most offshore oil drilling, an aspect that has drawn national opposition from environmentalists.
“It is sort of a bargain with the devil,” said Louisiana Sierra Club chapter Chairwoman Leslie March.
Some voice concern about whether oil money sent to Louisiana would be used for coastal restoration but a state constitutional amendment on the fall ballot would require funds be used for levies and reviving the coasts, said Rep. Bobby Jindal, a Republican and one of the authors of the House bill.
“I think the country has spent $100 billion dollars so far on rebuilding the Gulf Coast (after Katrina and Rita),” he said. “We can either invest now and restore nature’s protections, the barrier islands and the coast, or we will pay a lot more later.”
