Subscribe to RSSThe (real) trouble with Harry!
Editor’s note: the primary subject of this post is the obvious disconnect between the official coastal protection and restoration program and geoscience, which is exemplified by a new study by geologists Michael Blum and Harry Roberts showing that the Mississippi River no longer carries enough sediment to restore the delta. On June 30 the Daily Comet carried a NY Times story by Cornelia Dean about this study.
Movie poster from "The Trouble with Harry" 1955
A minor hindrance in my new writing career is age, which suggests that my hoary allusions and anecdotes will go over the heads of many readers, just like the wonderful puns in The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show were lost on young TV viewers during the 1960′s. The title of this piece is a cheeky reference to a 1955 movie directed by the iconic Alfred Hitchcock, a black comedy about how local folks handle the discovery of the body of a man whose name turns out to be “Harry.”
I spent most of June 29 at the Louisiana State Capitol, attending the latest meeting of the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority (CPRA). I heard every word said, not one of which mentioned the most important breaking news story about south Louisiana, a story that has implications for virtually everything discussed at the meeting. Talk about ignoring the ponderous pachyderm in the room!
Figure 2c Nature Geoscience July 2009. Blum and Roberts' projection of the Mississippi R. delta in 2100
Consider these facts:
1) The Mississippi River created the largest delta in North America, constituting most of south Louisiana.
2) This delta is deteriorating and being inundated at a catastrophic rate, putting two million people and one of the world’s most productive ecosystems at risk.
3) The 20 year effort to restore and protect our coast has so far involved billions of dollars, multiple agencies, and a number of practicing scientists – with one mystifying exception…
Harry H. Roberts, LSU Boyd Professor, Professor Emeritus and Director, Coastal Studies Institute
4) The single scientist who is arguably the world’s leading expert on the Mississippi River delta has never been seriously involved in the coastal discussion – or even invited to the table.
I’m talking about a long term friend, former LSU colleague, and coastal hero Harry H. Roberts, Ph.D., Boyd Professor and director of the highly esteemed LSU Coastal Studies Institute.*
The trouble with Harry is that he’s very smart and very busy, and also somewhat reticent and reserved. He’s clearly not the kind of person willing to sit through endless committee meetings or to deal with politics or bureaucracy. In other words, he represents exactly the kind of expertise that is most critical for restoration success – and exactly the kind of input that the system overlooks or actively ignores.
One of the biggest failures of my 18-year tenure at the Governor’s Office of Coastal Activities (GOCA) was my unsuccessful campaign to recruit Harry’s formal participation in restoration science and policy discussions. Meanwhile, so-called environmental “managers,” well intentioned folks with experience in miscellaneous coastal fields but with painfully little understanding of the geophysics of the Mississppi River delta, continue to dominate the committees that make decisions on how billions of dollars should be allocated.
One of these decisions was to spend endless hours, days, months and years discussing the ill-conceived West Bay project (WBP), rather than diversion projects that could have made a difference.
West Bay river diversion project (WBP)
The WBP has been problematic from when it was first conceived and promoted by the corps of engineers in 1992 under the Coastal Wetlands Planning, Protection and Restoration Act (CWPPRA). In my opinion, the WBP exemplifies the failure of CWPPRA to deal realistically with science and politics.
Coincidentally to the theme of this piece, Amy Wold wrote an article published in The June 28 Advocate on the highly questionable “benefits” of the WBP.
I have long held that diverting river water south of Venice is futile because there is very little head; the surrounding “landscape” subsides at 3-4 feet per century; and any land created would be at high risk for storm damage, as well as too remote from New Orleans to reduce storm surge.
Back to Harry Roberts. The breaking news that is widely circulating on the web but that was ignored by the CPRA is a new study in Nature Geosciences that was co-authored by Harry Roberts and his former LSU colleague Michael Blum. This study, entitled Drowning of the Mississippi Delta due to insufficient sediment supply and global sea-level rise, strongly suggests that the Mississippi River has become so “lean” or reduced in sediment load that it can no longer be relied upon to restore and sustain the delta.
The above graphic projection from Blum and Roberts’ article is the scariest scenario I have seen to date.
Mark Schleifstein spotlighted this study in a sobering article in the June 29 Times-Picayune. Schleifstein based his article partly on an interview with Harry Roberts that adds considerably to the “just the facts, Ma’am” tone of the science paper.
The fact that Schleifstein’s article was never mentioned during the five hour CPRA meeting blew my mind – especially in light of the fact that he (Schleifstein) occupied a front seat in the meeting room. Here are some key quotes from the abstract of the paper that was ignored during five hours of tedious discussion:
...the sediment load of the Mississippi River has been reduced by 50% through dam construction in the Mississippi Basin, which could affect the effectiveness of diversion plans.
We estimate that, in the absence of sediment input, an additional 10,000–13,500 km2 will be submerged by the year 2100 owing to subsidence and sea-level rise. Sustaining existing delta surface area would require 18–24 billion tons of sediment, which is significantly more than can be drawn from the Mississippi River in its current state. We conclude that significant drowning is inevitable, even if sediment loads are restored, because sea level is now rising at least three times faster than during delta-plain construction.
Quotes like this explain why the opinions of Harry Roberts tend to make him and his academic colleagues the proverbial ants at the picnic. That’s the trouble with Harry.
Len Bahr
*In addition to his many career achievements studying the great deltas of the world, Harry was also the major professor of Paul Kemp and Ivor van Heerden and many other notable coastal geologists.
16 Comments
2009-09-21
10:25:07
A proven method of restoration is suction dredging sediment from the river bottom and pumping it to the desired restoration location. This method has been used for years to build roadbeds, etc. Large river diversions already exist in Venice. They are Grand Pass, Tiger Pass, Baptiste Collette Pass and others. None of these passes are building land.
2009-08-23
08:32:29
[...] a post on June 29 The trouble with Harry I described the conspicuous absence in coastal planning of the world’s leading expert on the [...]
2009-07-10
23:38:32
Boo....Hiss...
A model predicting the coastal geomorphology of Louisiana out to a hundred years? Wish I had your crystal ball, Harry.
2009-07-06
17:31:25
I was at the meeting, and a brief statement concerning the Blum/Harry paper was how Chairman Milling began. It was not on the agenda, but was a preface to the meeting. He chose to handle it as stimulus not to wait ; to be aware that time is running out and that action is needed now rather than later. I think the paper was too recent for the people at the table to have digested it yet.
I was grateful that this has come out now - it stated succinctly what many of us have understood without having the numbers to back it. It reinforces the need to use whatever sediment is in the river as early as possible to start building land. We can't wait. Subsidence and sealevel rise certainly are not going to wait on us. Every hour makes a difference; ever particle of sand taken away, or deposited makes a difference - now.
2009-07-07
03:31:05
Karen-
Your comment refers to the Gov's Coastal Advisory Commission meeting on Wednesday July 1 and King Milling did make a statement on Mike and Harry's paper. I was writing about the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority (CPRA) meeting on Monday June 29, where not a single word was said about the paper. It's hard to keep up with all these meetings!
2009-07-01
19:09:26
I deal with the issues of my home( coastal Louisiana) as I do with my life. The issue is not whether either will last forever, but whether I will make the best use of the time they will exist. I did not look at the report as big news because most of the geologist I have dealt with over the years have expressed the same issues. One may say that maintaining a particular ecosystem another 20 years is folly. It may, but not any more than life itself.
2009-07-02
02:57:04
Windell-
I appreciate and respect your comment. Your perspective, based on personal passion, family heritage and on the ground experience, is as valid as anyone who hasn't spent his professional career studying deltaic processes all over the world.
On the other hand I don't think that the warnings of Harry Roberts should be casually dismissed as repetitions of old geology issues. My point is that all "experts" are not equally knowledgeable and some of the most informed geoscientists (especially Harry Roberts) have never been seriously consulted re saving our beloved delta. That reduces the credibilty of our effort and is inexcusable.
If Shell Oil decided to build a state-of-the-art platform in the deep gulf they would aggressively seek the best experts in the world, not just whoever happened to be available. We should do no less.
2009-06-30
21:40:47
During all of the years of planning and debate about coastal restoration priorities, a key piece of information was missing. How much sediment was really available, and how well did it match up to the need? The answers to these most fundamental questions are beginning to finallly, finally emerge. This new report gives us a reasonable baseline. As Denise Reed has pointed out it does not include the potential contribution of plant biomass to soil accretion. But as John Day also points out, the projection of sea level rise used may be conservative. Planners should begin using this as a baseline, and match it up to what we now know about the most rapidly subsiding areas of the coast, such as the Bird's Foot, and the tectonically active areas such as those gulfward of fault lines near Golden Meadow. Diversions have to be designed to be done in areas where there is still a stable tectonic platform, where they'll do some good for protecting communities from storm surge, where there is suffucient shallow open water, and where there is suitable vegetative substrate on surviving emergent wetland platforms--vegetation that won't be harmed by added nutrients.
R.T. Marlin
rtmarlin@gmail.com
2009-06-30
21:40:47
During all of the years of planning and debate about coastal restoration priorities, a key piece of information was missing. How much sediment was really available, and how well did it match up to the need? The answers to these most fundamental questions are beginning to finallly, finally emerge. This new report gives us a reasonable baseline. As Denise Reed has pointed out it does not include the potential contribution of plant biomass to soil accretion. But as John Day also points out, the projection of sea level rise used may be conservative. Planners should begin using this as a baseline, and match it up to what we now know about the most rapidly subsiding areas of the coast, such as the Bird's Foot, and the tectonically active areas such as those gulfward of fault lines near Golden Meadow. Diversions have to be designed to be done in areas where there is still a stable tectonic platform, where they'll do some good for protecting communities from storm surge, where there is suffucient shallow open water, and where there is suitable vegetative substrate on surviving emergent wetland platforms--vegetation that won't be harmed by added nutrients.
R.T. Marlin
rtmarlin@gmail.com
2009-06-30
17:59:15
And the CPRA continues with planning on projects like Morganza and Donaldsonville which are the equivalent of building sand castles on a beach.
R.T. Marlin
tmarlin@gmail.com
2009-06-30
16:58:44
The recent Blum and Robert's article is an excellent addition to the growing body of scientific evidence that Louisiana is undergoing rapid change, that climate change is a reality due to geenhouse warming, and that impacts such as accelerated sea level rise require more insight and intelligent planning than has been happening to date in Louisiana. Or elsewhere around the Gulf, except perhaps Florida. This topic, this article and the impications of SLR should be at the top on the next CPRA agenda. Louisiana is facing a SLR of 1.5 to 2 meters by year 2100 and CPRA plans to date pretty much ignore this reality.
2009-06-30
14:42:10
Len - How can you expect the CPRA to address this groundbreaking study, when they didn't have the common courtesy to call ahead and place it on the agenda? ;-)
I think this study concretely points out what many have been saying for years: the coast of the future is not the coast of the past, no matter how successfully our restoration plans are implemented. The best element of this is the scary graphic which should prompt some serious thought and action to prioritize the most useful sediment diversions used in tandem with pipeline sediment delivery. Of course if the planned expenditure of the CPRA's surplus is any indication, we can all talk about restoration until 2100, but we're just going to get big levees through our marsh.
2009-06-30
14:38:40
Not just Harry. There are many experts who spend time doing highly respected research and shun the endless "policy and planning" bull sessions and the media spotlight.
Len--you do a great service in translating their research into "fundamental constraints" that the BS-ers need to observe.
2009-06-30
13:16:41
Actually, in the MRD below Venice the subsidence rates are much higher than the 3-4 ft per century you've noted, making the problem there much worse. (based on data, not opinion)
The Blum-Roberts article shows the need for a clear vision of a sustainable coast, which we do not have. It is past time trying to restore the coast. We need to be thinking of how to engineer the landscape so that it can be self sustaining in the near and far off future.
The Louisiana coast of our grandchildren will not look like ours today. Communities, fishing grounds, the land itself has always moved and changed. We need to accept that, quit trying to maintain the land as it exists, and work with the cyclic nature of this delta. If we do, then we will have a lasting coast for generations to come.
We can do this. And diversions alone are not the answer. But, we need to draw the line in the marsh and make the tough decisions of what can be replaced, what can be sustained, and what is destined to fade into the sea.
To think we can out-engineer cycles that are thousands of years old, and which sustained some version of our coast for thousands of years, is sheer folly.
2009-06-30
14:16:57
CoastGhost-
Many thanks for your correction on the subsidence rate below Venice; the 3-4 ft/century is an old number that was used prior to the work of Dokka, et. al.
I agree with most of your comments, (and those of John Day) with one exception: I don't believe in "drawing the line in the marsh," which implies that we could build a Maginot levee that would "protect" coastal wetlands. That's marsh management, which is also sheer folly in my opinion.
2009-06-30
12:09:23
I think that the article by Harry and Mike is right on. It may understate the problem since it uses rates of relative sea level rise that may be low. There are a number of recent papers that strongly suggest that eustatic sea level rise in this century will be a meter or more. Add this to subsidence and the RSLR will be 5-6 feet.