The state of Louisiana has lost more than 425 square miles of land since 1990. That's just 26 years.
That's 1/3 the size of Rhode Island.
At this rate, New Orleans, Lafayette, and Lake Charles will have the Gulf of Mexico lapping at its doorsteps in another decade or so. This cannot be sustained. Katrina, Rita, Ike and Gustav exponentially accelerated that rate. The Chandeleur Islands are just sand spits now, where they were once sizable islands.
In my own state of Alabama, Bayou La Batre and Coden have lost nearly 3 square miles of land in the last 20 years. That doesn't sound like much, except for the fact that the roads are now covered over in normal afternoon southern rainstorms. It's also about 1/4 of the towns' entire sizes. Cat Island and Raccoon Island were around a 1/4 mile size and both are now underwater and cannot be found. A century ago, Portersville, Alabama, was south and east of Coden, and a major resort town. The remnants of it now sit 300 yards in the Mississippi Sound, with just a piling or slab sticking out of the water. Not one trace of land left.
I suspect that in 50 years, barring some major change, Louisiana's coastline to the Florida panhandle coastline, will be around 10 miles inland or more.
A poet once wrote that we cannot stop the rising of the tide and I know this is true and inevitable, however, it takes on a very sad tone, where human beings are involved, especially the human beings are some of the poorest in the country.
We're all family in the hurricane prone areas of the Gulf and south Atlantic seaboard, united by these storms and what havoc they wreak, and I know we will all weather it, but it's going to be painful to watch. |