Creating a Diversion: Why the Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion (MBSD) Project Is Unpopular Among Coastal Communities in Southeast Louisiana

Abstract

Abstract The Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion (MBSD) project, located in Barataria Bay, Southeast Louisiana, is one of the most ambitious coastal restoration projects in U.S. history. The MBSD project is designed to convey sediment-rich water from the Mississippi River through the levee system and into the coastal marshes of the Barataria basin. The MBSD project is intended to slow, and perhaps even reverse, coastal erosion through alluvial sedimentation and the augmentation of freshwater wetland vegetation communities. In spite of the importance of the MBSD project for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority of Louisiana, it is extremely unpopular among coastal communities along the Barataria Bay coast and beyond. Based on our ethnographic research in Lower Plaquemines Parish, we provide some insights concerning why this level of opposition exists. Above all, the MBSD project is perceived as highly threatening to key marine fish species targeted by small-scale commercial fishers, especially shrimp (Farfantepenaeus aztecus and Litopenaeus setiferus) and oysters (Crassostrea virginica). Small-scale fishing is crucially important to the social and economic systems involved in risk buffering and community resilience, as well as a key feature of social identity and source of profound place attachment. While planning for the MBSD project has considered impacts to coastal communities in strictly financial and environmental terms, it has failed to adequately consider its potential social and social-psychological consequences among coastal communities.