Sample Solution

Due to decades of mismanagement, along with damaging hurricanes and the 2010 Gulf oil spill, coastal Louisiana is disappearing at a rate of one football field every 100 minutes. In the past 100 years, Louisiana has lost over 1,900 square miles, roughly the size of Delaware. Several major factors contribute to this land loss.

First off, the delta’s wetlands are, and always will be, sustained by the rich sediments delivered by the Mississippi River, but huge levees built to protect communities and other resources have in turn cut the tie between the delta and its lifeline, completely wasting the sediments that keep the marshes replenished. Even without these levees, the amount of sediment left in the lower Mississippi most likely wouldn’t sustain the regrowth of the marshland already lost. Given the number of dams and locks built upriver on the Missouri, Mississippi, and Ohio Rivers, the amount of sediment in the lower Mississippi has decreased by more than 70 percent since 1850.

Also, Louisiana is known as America’s Energy Coast, so thousands of offshore oil rigs and wells border the state’s shoreline. These oil platforms have severely affected the coastal hydrology and sped up land loss, not to mention the thousands of miles of oil and shipping canals, such as the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet and the Houma Navigational Canal, which carry saltwater deep into the wetlands, disrupting the salinity balance and murdering freshwater vegetation.