In race against rising seas, Louisiana scrambles to save dwindling coast

JEAN LAFITTE, LA.—Tough decisions are coming thicker and faster than the Gulf of Mexico in southern Louisiana these days – and the water is coming up faster than anyone in the region can remember. Stand on the main road in Jean Lafitte, for example, and you can smell the Gulf’s salt in the air.

Faced with a multipronged assault of environmental changes combining to wash away the state’s coastline at an unprecedented rate, state officials and local communities are absorbed in nothing less than an existential struggle against an increasingly hostile and proximate ocean.

“The very basic recognition that the coast is in deep trouble and we really need to take action, that’s very widely recognized” in the state, says Torbjörn Törnqvist, chair of the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Tulane University in New Orleans.

Indeed, the science has become hard for Louisiana officials to ignore…

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