Louisiana Cancels Landmark Restoration Project, Undermining Decades of Coastal Progress
NEW ORLEANS — The State of Louisiana has officially canceled the Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion—the largest single ecosystem restoration effort in U.S. history and the cornerstone of the state’s own Coastal Master Plan. The project’s termination was announced by the Louisiana Trustee Implementation Group (TIG), the entity responsible for overseeing the expenditure of Natural Resources Damages funds from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and follows the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ decision earlier this summer to suspend the project’s permit. Both decisions were prompted by actions taken by Louisiana’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority since Governor Jeff Landry took office and mark a sharp departure from the science-backed, publicly supported approach that has defined Louisiana’s coastal restoration leadership. The termination of the project falls between two critical milestones: the 15th anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster, which funded the project, and the upcoming 20th anniversaries of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, which spurred the creation of Louisiana’s restoration program.
Restore the Mississippi River Delta, a coalition of national and local conservation groups, issued the following statement:
“In a complete abandonment of science-driven decision-making and public transparency, Governor Jeff Landry and his administration have pulled the plug on a fully funded, permitted, and under construction project designed to rebuild tens of thousands of acres of our collapsing coast. The Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion represents decades of research, public engagement, and bipartisan support.
Today's announcement by the TIG was the culmination of a year and a half-long campaign of misinformation and political arm-twisting by Govenor Jeff Landry and his coastal team to undermine and finally kill the state's largest ecosystem restoration project.
Mid-Barataria is more than a project—it represents a generational investment, paid for with the penalties of an environmental disaster. These dollars were meant to restore the coast, not settle a cancellation of contracts behind closed doors. The project’s cancellation means the state is throwing away more than $618 million intended to be spent to protect the coast’s culture, residents, and businesses.”
The state has recently resurrected the idea of a smaller diversion near Myrtle Grove as a substitute, but that project was previously dropped from the state’s master plan years ago due to poor performance in early modeling.
Restore the Mississippi River Delta continued:
“A stopgap project with no data is not a solution. We need diversion designs backed by science—not politics.
Coastal Louisiana is still in an accelerated land loss crisis, and the science remains clear: sediment diversions are essential to building and sustaining wetlands at scale. Any alternative must be grounded in rigorous evaluation, transparent public engagement, and a commitment to outcomes—not opinions and optics.
We remain as committed as ever to ensuring timely, large-scale restoration for Louisiana's coast happens before it’s too late to turn the tide on our land loss crisis. Projects like Mid-Barataria – and the expertise and public vetting that accompanied it—are non-negotiable for Louisianians. Either we move ahead with urgency, or we all lose.
We call on our local, state and federal leaders to uphold the principles that have made Louisiana a global model for coastal restoration. We also urge the Louisiana TIG —charged with restoring the Gulf in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster—to provide a full public accounting of why it is allowing the Landry administration to walk away from a thoroughly vetted project under construction, already backed by more than half a billion dollars in oil spill settlement funds. The stakes are too high—and the lessons of Katrina, Rita and the Deepwater Horizon disaster too hard-fought—to retreat from solutions we know can work.”
###
About Restore the Mississippi River Delta:
Restore the Mississippi River Delta is working to protect people, wildlife and jobs by reconnecting the river with its wetlands. As our region faces the crisis of land loss, we offer science-based solutions through a comprehensive approach to restoration. Composed of conservation, policy, science and outreach experts from Environmental Defense Fund, National Audubon Society, the National Wildlife Federation and Pontchartrain Conservancy, we are located in New Orleans and Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Washington, D.C.; and around the United States. Learn more at MississippiRiverDelta.org and connect with us on Facebook and Twitter.