Editorial roundup

Jan. 3 NOLA.com/The Times-Picayune

Louisiana coast restoration

The most urgent challenge Louisiana faces is the land washing away beneath us along our coast. More than 2,000 square miles of shoreline have been destroyed since the early 1930s.

That is a daunting number, but the state is working to slow erosion and rebuild land.

In 2017, Louisiana’s coastal scientists built more than 1,000 acres of marsh, protected 32 miles of coast and planted more than 100,000 native plants and trees. …

The state is a decade into its 50-year coastal restoration master plan, and there are encouraging successes. The big concern, of course, is the growing price tag. When the plan was approved by the Legislature in

2007, the cost was estimated at

$50 billion. Now, it is up to $92 billion.

The BP settlement is providing a funding boost, but that money will play out. The state so far has one stream of revenue that is ongoing — the revenues from the 2006 Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act.

Louisiana has been waiting more than a decade for the full force of GOMESA to kick in. We’re at that moment now, but the projections are dramatically smaller than the state was expecting.

Instead of getting $140 million per year in oil and gas royalties, the Department of the Interior said in October that Louisiana would receive only about half that much. Twenty coastal parishes were expecting to split as much as $37 million, but that also was cut in half.

To help offset those losses, Sen. Bill Cassidy and House Majority Whip Steve Scalise pushed for nearly $300 million for coastal restoration for Gulf Coast states in 2020 and 2021 in the tax bill that passed in December.

Under GOMESA, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Texas share 37.5 percent of Gulf oil and gas revenues. The law went into effect in 2007, but had been restricted to two small portions of the Gulf. That limited the payout.

A much larger portion of the Gulf is being added now, but energy expansion has slowed over the past decade. The added money from Congress for 2020 and 2021 is a big win. …

The royalty payments won’t be enough to cover the full cost of the master plan, but they are a vital piece. Thanks to Rep. Scalise and Sen. Cassidy the work to rebuild land can continue.