Louisiana shows Mother Nature has bad sense of humor
Hurricane Delta smashed into Lake Charles, Louisiana on Oct. 10, with 100 mph winds while the area was recovering from Hurricane Laura. Damages may reach $14 billion.
Such destruction was particularly disturbing as Iwas hosted by a group of conservationists there 30 years ago. One leader, a Cajun, took me out on Lake Charles and its bayous and their swampy cypress and tupelo with alligators andwondrous birdlife.
Wevisited hisCajunshack, whereheand male friends hung out fishing and jabbering. Hehadahomemade.22 zipgunused to kill rats invading his cabin.
We talked about wetland loss and toxic chemicals from oil and gas operations and chemical plants. They were as passionate and caring about their bayous, lakes and critters as I was about the Chesapeake. They were allowed permits to kill gators based on their landholdings but declined to do so out of love and respect for thiswatery ecosystem.
I had met other dedicated conservationists earlier at the 1839 Oak Alley Plantation House in an area much closer to New Orleans along Cancer Alley, where many other sugar plantations and mansions once lined the Mississippi. Now petrochemical plants produce a toxic stewof air andwater pollution. Plans were being fought for another monstrous new chemical plant along the Mississippi.
Cancer Alley unevenly affects people of color and lower-income folks, some descendants of sugar slaves, all trying to live their lives free from such contamination and complaining about the state’s lax environmental laws and enforcement.
I also met a Cajun band member I also met a band member of Bayou Ramblers, who hosted me at his shack near Lafayette. We sat outside listening to a Cajun radio station eating his wife’s crawfish (mudbug) etouffee, the best I ever had. Out in his boat, I learned how much they cherished bayou country.
Unfortunately, Louisiana is like the Chesapeake, a despoiled paradise.
Oil and gas operations have channelized the coastal zone to its breaking point, injecting saltwater into freshwater habitats, increasing erosion and wetland loss, as do levees. Louisiana has the highest U.S. wetland losses, accounting for 80%. Louisianalostapproximately1,900squaremiles of its coast since 1932. By comparison, Anne Arundel County has 415 square miles of land.
Louisiana’s barrier islands have decreased by 40%. These combined losses
exacerbate storm surges and damage from hurricanes, global warming and rising Gulf water levels.
Wetland and barrier island losses also threaten the state’s seafood industry, second largest in the nation, accounting for 25% of U.S. seafood consumption, including 35% of oysters and 30% of blue crabs.
In 2019, controversial freshwater releases coming down the Mississippi from global warming-induced heavy flooding in the Midwest caused a massive die-off and shortage of Louisiana oysters.
I later traveled with a conservation leader acrossLakePontchartrain to meet a life-long waterman living in a house built on the Lake, his boat under the house. He was very suspicious, knowing Iwas a state senator.
Learning we were both close in our conservation views, he opened up and told mea sad story about his quittingworking the water. As has happened with baywatermen, he could no longer make a living on the water because of destructive practices affecting fisheries.
He had been a shrimper and crabber. The lake, with its shallowandwarmwater, was a crab haven. He went to his freezer and showed me a 9-inch male crab wrapped in aluminum foil. He said he stopped crabbing because crab sizes and abundance had shrunksomuch, hedid notwant tobepart of the declining fishery.
He expressed strong support for the federal government acquiring more land around the lake to preserve as a wildlife refuge, a very progressive position for a Louisianan. His wife used towork thewater with him, but she nowwas a toll taker on the long bridge over the Lake.
Lake Pontchartrain has many parallels to the Chesapeake. It is a large estuary plagued with familiar problems: wetland losses, shore erosion; agricultural and stormwater runoff; wastewater and septic tank discharges; and sea-level rise.
I have grown to love Louisiana’s rich biodiversity, culture, history, food, music, Cajun and Creole influences, and its people. But the hard lessons we have learned in our Bay region as we squander our grandchildren’s natural inheritance are on display in Louisiana with even more catastrophic results unleashing hurricanes of greater frequency and destruction.
As a survivor of Delta and Laura said in a newsstory: “If this isMotherNature, Mother Nature has a bad sense of humor.”
With such human transgressions against her, that is understandable.