Protected areas and biodiversity
The territory has different types of protected areas, under the jurisdiction of the country or the state of Louisiana. These include Poverty Point World Heritage Site (UNESCO), which is home to one of the largest archaeological sites in the country, Cane River Creole National Historical Park and Heritage Area, which preserves historic plantations, and Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Reserve, which is made up of six different sites (including a visitor's center in the French Quarter of New Orleans) and aims to protect natural and cultural sites that reflect the uniqueness of Louisiana.
The bayous are former arms of the Mississippi River, which are home to complex and fragile ecosystems within vast areas of fresh water, associated with an exceptional biodiversity, with emblematic species (bald cypress, alligators, birds). However, these unique environments are threatened by human activities (including agriculture, industry), hurricanes and extreme events linked to climate change. According to an American research institute, Louisiana (known as the "Bayou State") loses the equivalent of a soccer field every hour.Threats from the industry
Oil activity generates multiple environmental and health impacts. The 4,000 drillings and 15,000 km of canals dug in the bayous, by moving a large quantity of sediments, have induced a phenomenon of soil subsidence which disturbs the ecosystems, which play a role of natural barriers. In addition, there is chronic and accidental pollution from industries. One example is the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in 2010, which caused one of the country's most serious oil spills and environmental disasters. The lack of sediments linked to dams, as well as the effects of climate change, with hazards of great violence, such as storm Ida in August 2021, also contribute to the disappearance and degradation of natural environments.
"Cancer Alley
It is a 140 km long strip of land between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, where chemical industries are installed, generating, in addition to acute pollution, chronic contamination. The poor inhabitants are the most exposed to this deleterious environment where the risk of cancer is more than 50 times higher than the national average, according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency.
The Bayou Corne sinkhole
Not far from Cancer Alley in Bayou Corne is asinkhole. It is a circular depression formed following the collapse of a well formerly exploited for the extraction of brine, which let escape methane, other toxic gases, and hydrocarbons which contaminated water tables and forced the displacement of a whole part of the local population in 2012.
Facing climate change
Climate change in Louisiana is resulting in accelerated coastal erosion (rising seas) and more frequent and intense extreme events, such as Hurricanes Katrina in 2005 and Ida in 2021. Perhaps the most telling illustration of climate change is Isle de Jean-Charles, which has lost nearly 98% of its land area in less than 70 years. Excluded from the perimeter of the protection of the dams (see below), the island is expected to disappear completely under water within 50 years and the inhabitants, climate refugees, are being relocated elsewhere.
August 29, 2005: Hurricane Katrina
The hurricane, which swept through southern Louisiana, flooded more than 80 percent of New Orleans, where salt water sat for weeks. When Hurricane Rita arrived a few weeks later, neighborhoods flooded again as levee consolidation work was not completed. Part of the tragedy of Katrina was that such a disaster was predictable: geographic location, obsolete levee protection system, recent storms that passed very close by. The oldest neighborhoods, built on land above sea level (French Quarter, Faubourg Marigny, Bywater, part of Uptown), were not flooded, unlike the newer or poorer neighborhoods, located between one and two meters below sea level and resulting from the draining of swamps and flooded land, which were the most affected (Gentilly, Lakeview, New Orleans East). As mentioned earlier, wetlands are natural defenses against flooding. In the nineteenth century, an earthen levee was built, just high enough to hold back some of the Mississippi's floodwaters. A drainage system was then put in place. This did not prevent New Orleans from being flooded in 1927 and again in 1965. Congress reacted and asked the government agency, the Army Corps of Engineers, to be responsible for flood control and, therefore, for the construction of levees all along the Mississippi River Valley. Short on funds, the agency changed plans but completed the construction anyway. Unfortunately, on August 29, 2005, part of the levee broke and flooded three quarters of the city. Powerless, noting the damage and especially the number of deaths, the agency acknowledged its responsibility on June1, 2006. The work (15 billion dollars) was completed in June 2011. 523 km of dikes were repaired in 2006 and the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority (CPRA) was created. The Army Corps of Engineers has built the largest drainage station in the world. The inertia of President George W. Bush in the first days after Katrina has been the subject of most criticism, as well as the after-effects of this late action (inhabitants without water, food or shelter, deaths from dehydration, fatigue and scenes of looting). However, the willingness to rebuild and the courage of New Orleanians was praised by all. The Lower Ninth Ward, the poorest and most devastated neighborhood, on which Brad Pitt's Make It Right Foundation focused, has still not regained its former appearance.
