Meetings on Coastal Master Plan This Week

The Louisiana Coastal Protection & Restoration Authority (CPRA) and America’s WETLAND Foundation (AWF) have announced that they will host two leadership roundtables this week and a culminating coastal summit in December to discuss the state’s 2017 Coastal Master Plan.

“We stand at a critical juncture in our fight to save the coast,” King Milling, chair of AWF and the Governor’s Advisory Commission on Coastal Protection, Restoration and Conservation, said.

“Many years of diligent planning through several administrations are now resulting in solutions and immediate action. The 2017 Coastal Master Plan builds on two previous iterations and upon its completion, CPRA is poised to move to a larger scale of project implementation.”

On the table for discussion at the meetings are issues that address:

• how the plan will effect commercial, community and cultural interests;
• the move toward altering an engineered levee system to allow greater sediment delivery from the Mississippi River;
• developing insurance programs for communities threatened with retreat from low lying areas;
• the science used to prioritize projects in the plan;
• creative financing for restoration to encourage private sector investment;
• innovative approaches to cost and time effective solutions.

Results from the two leadership roundtables slated for today and tomorrow in Baton Rouge will inform the agenda for the December Coastal Solutions Summit, timed to coincide with release of the 2017 Master Plan and its consideration by the legislature in the first quarter of 2017.