O’Malley works mainly on retrofitting existing buildings with money granted to Tulane by the Federal Emergency Management Agency following Hurricane Katrina. He is always on the move between campuses and projects, from Howard-Tilton Memorial Library to the closing Mississippi Coast campus. “We’ll never reclaim all of our lost wetlands, nor will we stop coastal wetland loss or sea level rise, but we can do things that can help us live more sustainably along the coast for a longer time - more so than if we do nothing,” Moreau said.įor Brian O’Malley, assistant vice president of capital projects federal and grant funded services, every second counts. He uses his nights to teach about sustainability and its relationship to the economy, including how Louisiana’s coast affects local businesses. Moreau spends his days working at the Turtle Cove Environmental Research Station, which focuses on wetland education and research. Freeman School of Business, is one of those people. Robert Moreau, an adjunct professor in the Tulane A.B. There are, however, many people working to turn back the clock and keep Louisiana on the map. The alternative is the loss of Louisiana’s “boot,” the bottom third of the state. “I think the message … is significantly more severe than any of us thought even five or 10 years ago,” King Milling, chairman of the Governor’s Advisory Commission on Coastal Protection, Restoration and Conservation, said in an interview with The Times-Picayune in October.Įven if the plan is executed, Louisiana still stands to lose 28,000 square miles of coast within the next 40 years, and the 27,000 buildings on that land will have to be flood-proofed, elevated or relocated. The new plan focuses on many projects that will rebuild wetlands and land, replace sediment, update levee systems across the state and focus on elevating the threatened communities. The finalized plan will then be introduced in the Louisiana state legislature in the 2017 legislative session. The 2017 Master Plan is the third edition and is open to public comment until March 26. It aims to revise the plan every 5 years. Louisiana’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority released the Coastal Master Plan in 2007 as a guide for mitigating coastal land loss, as scientists have no way of halting the loss of Louisiana’s coastline. The 2017 Master Plan states that more than 1,800 square miles of coast have been lost in the past 80 years due to both natural and man-made causes “including climate change, sea-level rise, subsidence, hurricanes, storm surges, flooding, disconnecting the Mississippi River from coastal marshes, and human impacts.” The New Orleans and Tulane communities might be looking for a new home, as Louisiana loses land at the rate of a football field every 45 minutes. This ticking clock could be just as fatal as the drop of a bomb. Many cities, however, are focused on what is vanishing - their coasts. From population and sea levels to global instability and nuclear warfare, facets of our world are growing.
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