Office of Coastal Management

COAST 2050 PLAN MOVING AHEAD—FINAL SERIES OF PUBLIC HEARINGS SET

BATON ROUGE – Officials at the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources (DNR) today announced a series of public meetings in four coastal regions to be held to finalize a draft of Coast 2050, a strategic plan for sustaining coastal resources with a vision of Louisiana's coast in the year 2050.

DNR Secretary Jack Caldwell said, "This plan is critical for the sustainability of our coast. We've lost at least a thousand square miles since 1950. By the year, 2050, we'll lose a thousand more if nothing is done. This plan identifies more than 500 needed preservation projects that could cut our projected land loss by 70 to 80 percent.

"Governor Foster sees how important this plan is to Louisiana's future and has given it his full support and encouragement," Caldwell said.

Dr. Bill Good, administrator of the DNR Coastal Restoration Division, said, "The picture is not very pretty at all. The no-action alternative would be like drawing a straight line between Mississippi and Texas and pretending everything south of that line is gone.

"The Coast 2050 plan, when implemented, will make our coast sustainable. We depend on the coast for a lot of things, including habitat for fish and wildlife, recreation, water purification and hurricane protection. Without the wetlands, our coastal highways, waterways, levees and utilities would be very difficult or impossible to maintain," Good said.

According to Katherine Vaughan, DNR assistant secretary for the Office of Coastal Restoration and Management, the effort is a federal, state and local partnership among DNR, the Coastal Wetlands Planning, Protection and Restoration Act (Breaux Act) Task Force, the Louisiana Wetland Conservation and Restoration Authority (State Wetlands Authority), and the Coastal Zone Management Authority (CZM). "This group has been working closely for more than a year with parish and local governments to achieve an ambitious goal.

"The draft will be completed by the end of September, with mapped-out strategies for the four coastal regions, and the Breaux Act Task Force, the State Wetlands Authority, DNR and CZM may formalize the plan as coastal policy once it's finalized in December," Vaughan said.

SCHEDULE OF COAST 2050 MEETINGS:

All meetings start at 7 pm