The RESTORE Act was enacted by Congress in 2012 and redirects ta portion of the Clean Water Act administrative and civil penalties flowing from the Deep Water Horizon disaster to the Gulf Coast for ecologic restoration, economic sustainability, and the encouragement of Gulf oriented science.
According to Institute Director Mark Davis, “The RESTORE Act is an unprecedented redirection of Clean Water Act penalties and like most unprecedented things comes with limitations, questions, and new responsibilities. The Act can help make many good things happen but there are many needs it won’t touch. It will take concerted effort and meaningful public engagement to deliver on the promise of this Act. While no one wants future spills, history teaches that we will have them. Whether future Clean Water Act dollars will go to improving the areas impacted by those spills will turn largely on whether the RESTORE Act is an experiment the country thinks was a success.”
The report is available here: Promise, Purpose, and Challenge: Putting the RESTORE Act into Context for the Communities and Ecosystems of the Gulf of Mexico
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WHEN: March 18, 2013 from 9:00am to: 5:00pm
WHERE: Gallier Hall, 545 St Charles Ave New Orleans, LA 70130
To learn more and register go to:
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If these legislators prevail, Louisiana stands to lose more of its future than any state in America, and most countries of the world.
On one side of the debate are scientists representing thousands of experts in all related disciplines around the world, backed by years of studies and data. Behind them is last week's report from the National Academy of Sciences that without "steep cuts" in carbon emissions, atmospheric contamination will soar "to levels not seen for 34 million years." You need only scan the paper for news that Greenland ice is calving at 10 times predicted rates, that snows are gone from the high Himalayas and Mount Kilimanjaro, that Western rivers are running on dry and that forests in many states are only waiting for the next spark to explode.
U.S. military generals and admirals are now calling climate change a "serious threat to world security." What do we do when several million refugees from Bangladesh start pouring over the Indian border, bomb them?
Congressional leaders, however, know better. One member accuses "nefarious" scientists of "whipping up a global frenzy." Oklahoma's Sen. Jim Inhofe warns of "the greatest hoax ever perpetuated on America." Rep. Joe Barton from Texas reasons that carbon dioxide cannot possibly be a pollutant, because "humans expel it when they breathe." (The thought that we also expel pollutants after we eat does not seem to occur).
A Minnesota congressman explains that God has "given us a creation that is dynamically stable," seconded by a colleague from Illinois who asserts "the Earth will end only when God declares it's time to be over." The stated gospel is that scientists mistake the nature of "God's wise design and powerful sustaining," viewing humans as a threat rather than "the bearers of God's image, crowned with glory and honor." Where does a debate go from here?
Congress summons Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson -- raised in the Lower 9th Ward, schooled in chemical engineering at Tulane University, deeply committed to the survival of this region and deeply aware of the threat -- to bash her in committee after committee about environmental protection in general and the agency's most critical initiative: first-ever controls, long called for by law, on carbon emissions.
You would think she was burning the Bible and the American flag.
What is clear is that the attack on climate change controls, in the name of "sound science," has nothing to do with science except to contradict it. These attacks are driven by faith, funded by carbon industries and fueled by media misinformation that has most Americans now believing, according to a Gallup poll, that they know a great deal about climate change, that much of it is caused by aerosol spray and by nuclear power plants.
There are few combinations more lethal than being convinced about something and dead wrong.
Nor is this coming from a need to balance the budget. These are the same leaders who insist on retaining windfall tax breaks for American billionaires and provide monster subsidies to the carbon industries.
Nor is this truly conservative. Even were there a chance that the world's best scientists are wrong, even if that chance were 50 percent, who would play Russian roulette with global systems in play? What is happening instead is the most non-conservative, risk-taking behavior in the world. You might even call it, its trappings of religion aside, immoral.
Which would mean little more for Louisiana than (mostly) men acting badly, but for New Orleans and our coast. We cannot survive the high end of sea level rise, no matter what we try to do. We cannot afford to trash EPA carbon controls. If others believe that God will save us all, I welcome their prayers. But if they sell our future to this belief and to the carbon industries, we should not follow.
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Oliver Houck is a professor of law at Tulane University. His e-mail address is ohouck@law.tulane.edu. This op-ed was originally published in the March 24, 2011 edition of The Times-Picayune.
]]>The Amicus Brief in Comer v Murphy Oil supports plaintiffs in one of the three major civil damage cases arising from Hurricane Katrina. The two other cases were centered on New Orleans. Comer et al are Mississippi coastal residents who were wiped out by the storm. They claim damages from the major carbon emitting industries of the US for their contributions to climate change which, they allege, in turn aggravated climate change and the severity of the storm. The amicus brief, to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeal in New Orleans, supports the plaintiff's right to bring such an action and prove their case, i.e. their "standing to sue".
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Any shot this city has at reclaiming that greatness will also have to be rooted in the realities of re-establishing a sustainable landscape for New Orleans and the surrounding communities. The key element in achieving this is the Mississippi River, or more precisely using the waters, nutrients and sediments of that river to maintain and enhance our rapidly disappearing coastal wetlands.
Everyone knows this and everyone knows this is urgent. The state knows it, the Army Corps of Engineers knows it and Congress and the White House know it. They have all said so in many ways (you can look it up). We have all said it many times and in many ways. But it isn't happening. Not even close.
Case in point: the recent decision by five federal agencies on the Coastal Wetlands Planning, Protection and Restoration Act Task Force to shut down the largest coastal restoration project yet built, the West Bay Diversion, because it threatened to increase siltation at some anchorages near the mouth of the river. That won't happen in the short run thanks to a decision by the state to pay the increased cost of dredging, but that doesn't solve the problem, it just defers it.
The problem isn't just at West Bay or about a few anchorages. The problem is that despite nearly two decades of "comprehensive and integrated" coastal planning, we don't really have a coastal restoration program, and we won't have one as long as the only projects we can do are the ones that don't actually affect anyone or bump into any previously authorized projects.
If we have learned anything from the lessons of the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, years of oyster leasing conflicts and now West Bay, it is that coastal restoration comes in second to the vast array of flood control and navigation projects that have come before it. It runs second to the generations of oil and gas projects and private development projects that are spread across our coast (usually pursuant to some governmental permit, lease or license).
Those activities are important, and they need to be fully considered in our coastal planning. But when they effectively trump what may be our last, best chance to save our coast and ourselves, then some things needs to change. The first thing that needs to change is the idea that coastal restoration can succeed without changes in land use and our historic patterns of navigation and flood control. It can't.
Next, we need to focus less on mitigating for the impacts of coastal restoration projects and more on realizing that the coastal restoration effort is, quite simply, a massive mitigation program for the damage done by generations of navigation, flood control, oil and gas and development activity, however well intended or essential those things may have been or remain to be.
Protecting a handful of anchorages cannot be more important than restoring our coast, and by extension protecting the social, economic and ecological life of the region. Finally, the persistent tendency of government agencies at all levels to be managers of past projects and programs instead of protectors of current and future public interest must change. This will require leadership from the top -- mayors, our governor, agency heads and even the president -- and it will require persistent pressure from the public. We can make the changes necessary to have a more sustainable coast, efficient navigation and robust communities -- but this will only happen if it is what we concertedly work toward. We can honor our past, learn from it and build on it, but we can't be captive to it. Until a viable coast and protected, resilient communities are our clear priorities, we will continue to work against ourselves. If that happens, it will be our future that is left stuck in the mud.
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