From the Sky, There’s No Denying Louisiana’s Disappearing Coastline

As far back as settlement goes in New Orleans, efforts have been made to control flooding from the Mississippi River. Following a major flood event in 1849, Congress funded scientific surveys of the Mississippi River that were carried out by two men whose conflicting ideas about flood management would have major implications for the future of the river’s delta. 

Charles Ellet Jr., a civil engineer from Pennsylvania, proposed a comprehensive plan that incorporated levees, upriver spillways to divert floodwater to a more direct course to the Gulf of Mexico, and the creation of artificial reservoirs to manage river levels. Ellet’s 1852 report to Congress warned that reliance on levees alone would exacerbate the flooding issue, citing that the Mississippi River, which “was formerly allowed to spread over many thousand square miles of low lands, is becoming more confined to the immediate channel of the river, and is, therefore, compelled to rise higher and flow faster.”  

Ellet’s plan was challenged by that of A. A. Humphreys, an Army Corps engineer, who argued for a levees-only approach to flood management. While this aspect of Humphreys's recommendations would be criticized in retrospect, his elevation to Chief of the Army Corps of Engineers in 1866—the same year that commercial oil exploration began in coastal Louisiana—ensured that a comprehensive levee system would lock the Mississippi River in place. The result has been a river that dumps sediment into the Gulf of Mexico instead of redistributing it as terra firma—one major factor in coastal land loss. 

The problem was exacerbated with the rise of the oil and gas industry in the 20th century. Thousands of miles of pipelines and navigation canals cut for industry contributed to saltwater intrusion on freshwater marshland and wetlands erosion. They also provided more pathways for storm surges to advance inland. 

After decades of oil and gas exploration and development, the state was forced to reckon with the consequences to the environment. In what was known as the Tidelands Dispute, state and federal officials argued over how to define Louisiana’s coastline, for the purpose of collecting revenue from oil and gas leases operating within the seaward three-mile jurisdiction of submerged lands that the state was afforded. Considering the coastal erosion problems faced by the state, Louisiana wanted to immobilize the coastline boundary decreed by the Supreme Court in 1975. Louisiana eventually won the fight in 1986, when Congress passed an amendment to the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act clarifying a state’s coastline as a fixed, rather than ambulatory, boundary. However helpful the ruling was for ensuring the state wouldn’t lose out on mineral revenues, the press surrounding the dispute brought national attention to the inescapable fact of Louisiana’s disappearing coastline.  

As coastal erosion started to be recognized as an emerging environmental crisis, efforts like the Coastal Wetlands Planning, Protection, and Restoration Act of 1990 secured federal funding for future projects and designated a task force of state and federal representatives to direct a comprehensive restoration plan. While revenue from oil and gas activity was considered critical to economic growth, the task force acknowledged in its 1993 plan that the industry had directly contributed to advancing coastal land loss. 

Coastal restoration projects have been ongoing for decades, but their progress has been at odds with just how quickly the land is erased—roughly one football field’s worth every 100 minutes—alongside the federal government’s increasing deference toward the oil and gas industry. The story of East Timbalier Island is instructive.

Known as Bird Island in the early 20th century because of its role as an important nesting site for brown pelicans and other shorebirds, East Timbalier Island, along with several other Louisiana barrier islands, was established as one of the first federally protected wildlife refuges by executive order of President Theodore Roosevelt in 1907. Roosevelt visited East Timbalier years later with the Audubon Society and said of his experience there, “To lose the chance to see frigate-birds soaring in circles above the storm, or a file of pelicans winging their way homeward across the crimson afterglow of the sunset, or a myriad terns flashing in the bright light of midday as they hover in a shifting maze above the beach—why, the loss is like the loss of a gallery of the masterpieces of the artists of old time.”  

In 1969, President Richard Nixon revoked the island’s protected status in response to the booming oil and natural-gas industry. Brown pelicans, whose population was already in sharp decline, were replaced by pipelines and oil wells—more than 150 of them. In 2020, after decades of planning and millions spent on previous restoration projects at the island, the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority (CPRA) announced it was scrapping its efforts, declaring its restoration too complex and costly. InDepp’s image of the island, viewers are presented with the suggestion of land more than anything. This eroded barrier island appears almost entirely submerged, the space it once occupied inferred by the remnants of abandoned oil and gas infrastructure.

Depp also uses his unique perspective to highlight the ways climate issues hit closer to home by showing the impact of storms on coastal communities located outside the federal levee system.  Following Hurricane Ida’s landfall in August 2021, residences in the town of Lafitte were inundated with rising floodwaters from nearby Bayou Barataria. The concrete-capped floodwall separating the submerged neighborhood from the waterway appears alarmingly thin from Depp’s lofty view.  

While the effects of coastal erosion and climate change cannot be denied, there is positive change happening as well. Natural crevasses and freshwater diversion projects have worked to reconnect the sediment-rich Mississippi River to its floodplain, allowing the waterway to replenish damaged wetlands with valuable nutrients and land-building material that would otherwise be deposited into the Gulf of Mexico.  

The natural crevasse at Fort St. Philip, in Plaquemines Parish, has been one notable success story. Initially formed when the Mississippi River breached its natural levee, the site was enhanced in 2006 by the CPRA with additional crevasses and the construction of marsh terraces, earthen berms that catch and stabilize incoming sedimentary deposits.  

From Depp’s vantage point we see other positive outcomes from coastal restoration efforts like that of Scofield Island, a barrier island west of the Mississippi River bird’s-foot-shaped delta. The project site, which had experienced significant land loss and shoreline breaching, restored dune habitat and saline marsh through the mining and redistribution of Mississippi River sediment, as well as the planting of native vegetation to stabilize erosion. As our coastline sinks, a geologic process referred to as subsidence, our barrier islands play an increasingly important role as our first line of defense against increasingly powerful Gulf hurricanes and advancing storm surges. Utilizing the land-building capabilities of the Mississippi River and the sediment it carries can help us continue to protect our coastal environs and communities from the escalating impacts of climate change. 

Ben Depp’s documentation of these places offers a powerful, panoptic perspective of many intersecting environmental issues faced by our state’s fragile coastline—sea level rise, erosion, subsidence, and flooding—which we are rarely able to connect with visually. The photographs capture a challenging moment in our reckoning with the impacts of climate change, flood control measures, and expansive industry in the region by presenting views of the profound loss of land juxtaposed with positive outcomes of our state’s restoration efforts. We’re reminded of the sublime and dynamic forces acting upon the coastal landscape and invited to pursue a deeper understanding of how we’ve helped shape these environs, for better or worse.