Earth Equity News

Louisiana Coastal Communities Being Lost to Gulf. By Susan Saulny, NYTimes, August 24, 2008. "[About an hour south of New Orleans, along the banks of Bayou Lafourche, lies Golden Meadow, a community of 2,500 that] is sinking fast along with the rest of the southeastern Louisiana coast into the gulf, still its lifeblood but now also its nemesis. 'From year to year we can see the land that used to be there is not there anymore,' said Elphege Brunet Jr., whose family lives and works up and down the bayou. 'I'm almost 77 and I've seen it change before my eyes.' Coastal erosion is eating away at the culture, the livelihood and, quite tangibly, the land itself at the ravenous rate of 12 square miles to more than 20 square miles a year. Whole communities have already washed away. Old timers speak wistfully about Sea Breeze and Manilla Village, settlements built on stilts in the marshes. These sorts of insular, out-of-the-way places were common in Cajun country even though they might not have appeared on Louisiana's road maps. Now they never will. 'It's the fastest disappearing land mass on Earth,' said Kerry St. Pé, a marine biologist who is director of the Barataria Terrebonne National Estuary Program, which works to help save the coast... According to St. Pé, 'There's a sadness about our people now.'"