Coastal Wetlands Planning, Protection, and Restoration Act Priority Project Lists I–XIII

Louisiana contains one of the largest and most productive expanses of coastal wetlands in North America. However, coastal land loss in Louisiana has reached catastrophic proportions. At an average rate of 24 square miles per year, an area the size of a football field is lost every 38 minutes. Reasons for Louisiana's wetland loss are complex and vary across the state. The effects of natural processes, such as subsidence and sea level rise, have combined with human actions at both large and small scales to produce a system on the verge of collapse.

Primary efforts to prevent catastrophic land loss were implemented in 1990 under the Coastal Wetlands Planning, Protection, and Restoration Act, also known as the Breaux Act. The Breaux Act provides approximately $50 million a year in federally allocated funds for coastal restoration projects in Louisiana.

From 1990 through 2004, the state of Louisiana and its federal partners authorized 147 Breaux Act projects and constructed 71 of those projects across coastal Louisiana. These projects employ a variety of strategies to combat Louisiana's complex land loss problems, ranging from large-scale freshwater diversions to localized shoreline protection structures. Following are some of these projects:

• The Bayou LaBranche Wetland Creation project used dredged material from Lake Pontchartrain to replace lost wetlands by directly creating a wetland area in shallow open water near the city of New Orleans.
• The Delta-Wide Crevasses project maintains presently existing crevasse splays, the construction of new crevasse splays, and future maintenance of selected splays in the Mississippi River delta region. The objective is to promote the formation of emergent freshwater and intermediate marsh.
• The East Timbalier Island Sediment Restoration Phases 1 and 2 were developed to enhance and extend the life expectancy of one of Louisiana's barrier islands. These projects involved the dredging of sand from submerged areas near the island and the pumping of that material to create dune and intertidal wetland habitats at several locations on the island.
• The Freshwater Bayou Wetland Protection project involved the construction of a rock dike to protect the west bank of the Freshwater Bayou Canal from shoreline erosion and the construction of several water control structures to restore a more natural hydrology within the project area.