Coastal geologist: “I have yet to speak to a scientist who thinks the project will be effective.”

“In the end, we have a project that is incredibly expensive. There has been little scientific review. It is questionable if the proposed berm will prevent oil from entering the wetlands it is designed to protect. The structure will be very short-lived. And there are many potential negative impacts of this structure on the coastal environment that have not been evaluated. Coastal dredging and filling can cause significant damage to marine organisms and local ecosystems as massive amounts of sand are dug up in one location and then deposited on the sea floor in another spot. In addition, building a 45-mile sand berm could alter tidal currents and lead to the erosion of natural barrier islands that protect the Louisiana coast from hurricanes.”

The magnitude of the BP oil disaster guarantees devastation to the Louisiana shore no matter how effective the response — see 20-year veteran of the Coast Guard: “With a spill of this magnitude and complexity, there is no such thing as an effective response.” And that means cynical politicians are in a perfect position to demagogue dubious solutions, since if they are ignored, they can merely point to the environmental devastation and say, “if only you had listened to those of us who know this area best.”

So we have Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and the berms — low-lying barrier islands that are made of dredged sand (click on figure above to enlarge).  A great many articles have been written explaining why this approach is somewhere between an unproductive use of scarce resources and a counterproductive effort that will do more harm than good.  I’ll excerpt some at length, including an excellent Yale e360 piece [quoted above] by a top coastal geologist.

Jindal himself would be more credible as a supporter of a science-based approach to protecting Louisiana, if he hadn’t launched an effort to block climate change regulations that are aimed at averting catastrophic climate change, which will submerge and destroy the very part of his state he is supposedly trying to save now.  And Jindal has mocked federal efforts to do science-based monitoring of other disasters (see “Eruptions of know-nothingism from conservative savior Bobby Jindal“).

I have scientists emailing me what a bad idea this is.  I welcome any expert comments or links from people who actually think this is a good idea.

Let’s start with some background from the LA Times in a June 6 piece, “Scientists skeptical about rush to build sand barriers:  Louisiana officials demand swift action to block oil, but berms are costly, fragile and potentially harmful” [there's a certain consistency in the message from scientists, which is what makes them so boring and easy to ignore amidst all the grandstanding]:

Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal, Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) and angry parish presidents have hammered the Obama administration in past weeks over what they characterize as a glacial federal approval process for the state’s plan to construct 128 miles of sand berms, dredging up 102 million cubic yards of seabed in the process, to bolster the state’s barrier islands and absorb oil before it reaches sensitive coastal marshes.

The Army Corps of Engineers gave final approval last week to a scaled-down version of the project after rejecting the state’s original proposal, which could have cost as much as $950 million and taken as long as nine months to build.

But as Jindal and other politicians celebrate the partial victory, coastal researchers warn that the project can’t be built in time to help “” even if it had been approved when first proposed last month. And scientists warn that it may have unforeseen consequences.

The berm system could reroute the spill up the Mississippi Delta, and it would be unlikely to survive even a mild storm during the current hurricane season.

It also will absorb the short supplies of sand badly needed for projects to restore the state’s coastline, damaged by past hurricanes.

Heavy equipment, including barges and dredge lines, could interfere with nesting season, now at its peak, for protected bird species….

The berms “will not survive even a low-intensity tropical storm in the northern gulf,” said Jack Kindinger, director of the U.S. Geological Survey’s Coastal and Marine Science Center in St. Petersburg, Fla. “If we have one next week, the berms will be gone. We have to be careful not to do more harm than good.”

Kindinger said that the new barriers may increase tidal action in open water, which would boost the salinity in estuaries and alter the lives of marsh plants and wildlife.

In a similar manner, the project could inadvertently drive oil into the Mississippi sound, the Biloxi marshes and Lake Borgne, according to the Army Corps’ analysis.

Gregory Stone, director of the Coastal Studies Institute at Louisiana State University, warned that scooping sediment out of the sea bottom could accelerate wave action.

“It’s not advisable to go out into shallow water and dredge and not expect potential negative impacts,” Stone said. “That’s going to increase the energy of the waves.”

Such worries prompted the Interior Department to conclude: “We do not think the risks inherent in proceeding without more environmental study and knowledge are acceptable.”

Uhh, so why are they doing this?  Because of political pressure is intolerable and unstoppable.  Back on May 27, nola.com reported:

U.S. Sen. David Vitter said the decision to approve only one island is an indication that President Obama “doesn’t seem to have a clue.”

“His decision on the emergency dredging barrier island plan is a thinly veiled ‘no,’ ” Vitter said. “Approving 2 percent of the request and kicking the rest months down the road is outrageous, absolutely outrageous.”

It is amusing Vitter would call anyone clueless or attack anyone’s plan as outrageous (see “Senator of Katrina-ravaged Louisiana tries to block climate change response centers” and Vitter: Obama’s temporary moratorium on deepwater drilling causes more ‘devastation’ than BP’s oil spill).

And consider what happened this week.  On Thursday, the WSJ reported:

In the latest twist in a controversy that has dragged on for weeks, the administration effectively ordered Louisiana officials Tuesday evening to temporarily stop building a line of sand berms east of the Mississippi River that the state officials see as crucial to protecting their fragile coastal marshes from incoming oil. Federal officials described the construction halt as necessary to prevent long-term environmental damage. Louisiana officials warned it could allow more oil to hit their shores right away.

Tom Strickland, the U.S. Interior Department’s assistant secretary for fish, wildlife and parks, said Louisiana officials had been building the berms in a way that violated conditions set out by the Obama administration when it approved the berm plan in late May. He said the state was dredging sand to build the berms from an offshore area that is too fragile, potentially intensifying erosion of the Chandeleur Islands, a chain of barrier islands the berms are designed in part to protect.

“You don’t want to destroy the village to save the village,” Mr. Strickland said in a call with reporters. “It’s a question of whether we’re going to impair that island chain in a way that it may not ever be able to be restored.”

The response to this rational science-based act of caution:

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, a Republican who has been critical of the Obama administration’s handling of the oil spill, decried the federal government’s move to curtail construction of the berms.

“We don’t have time for red tape and bureaucracy,” he said in his own news conference Wednesday. “We’re literally in a war to save our coast.” He added that he was “calling on the federal government to get out of the way.”

Louisiana officials requested federal authorization to build the berms in early May, but they didn’t get the blessing until weeks later, after amending the plan to address environmental concerns from several federal agencies. Among the tweaks was changing an area where they would dredge sand near the Chandeleur Islands, an environmentally sensitive area for birds and other wildlife.

In an alternate universe, Htrae, one could easily imagine the Feds insisting that they wanted to build berms, and Bizarro pro-science Bobby Jindal holding a press conference with a bunch of scientists demanding that they stop this pointless, costly, and possibly damaging diversion of crucial resources.

Indeed, Dr. Robert Young, “a professor of coastal geology and director of the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines at Western Carolina University,” has written two pieces — a June 14, NYT op-ed, “A Sand Trap in the Gulf” and a longer piece for Yale e360, “Under Pressure to Block Oil, A Rush To Dubious Projects,” which I excerpt below:

The White House has announced that this project is now moving forward, despite serious concerns among coastal scientists, including myself, that it will not be effective in keeping oil from the coast, could do more environmental harm than good, and would be extremely expensive….

Jindal’s argument for building the sand berm, just off existing barrier islands, is simple: It’s better to clean oil off of man-made sand berms than in Louisiana’s wetlands, which teem with fish and wildlife.

While mitigating the environmental damage of this spill is critical, it must be done in a way that wisely utilizes the resources at hand, effectively deals with the problem (e.g., keeping oil out of wetlands), and doesn’t do more harm than good. But the emergency projects currently being proposed by various entities and permitted by the Corps of Engineers “” including a plan to build a seawall in front of Dauphin Island, Alabama “” have not had sufficient review and design to guarantee that any of the above goals will be met. Indeed, since the Louisiana berm will not be continuous, there is a strong likelihood that oil will flow in through the gaps, then possibly become trapped in wetlands.

In addition to its questionable prospects for success, the Louisiana berm project would be extremely expensive. The application from the state of Louisiana estimated the cost to be about $3.8 million per mile, or about $171 million for the initial 45 miles of the permitted project. In its comments on the state’s application, the U.S. Department of Interior notes that cost estimates for mobilizing sand in the area have already been produced for the planning of future barrier island restoration. Using these numbers, the Interior Department suggests the costs are likely to be closer to $500 million. Thad Allen, the U.S. Coast Guard admiral in charge of the spill cleanup, said Wednesday that BP has agreed to pay for construction of the 45-mile line of sand berms, which he estimated would cost $360 million.

A project that could cost as much as a half-billion dollars should warrant serious review. Yet it has been very difficult to find a public record or details of the proposed project design and how it was vetted. Obviously, there was never any intention to solicit public comment. This may be appropriate in an emergency, but it begs the question: Who designed the project? Have they used the best available science? And will it work as advertised?

The state of Louisiana has a wealth of fine coastal scientists who have been working on the coastal restoration of the Louisiana delta region for decades. Yet those who I have spoken with have indicated that they have not been consulted on the project. I have yet to speak to a scientist who thinks the project will be effective. The Corps of Engineers gave agencies, such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), less than a day to submit comments on the proposal after it was presented to the agencies during a teleconference on May 17. Certainly, the agencies had very little time to scientifically evaluate the potential environmental impacts of such a massive project, but in their brief submissions the agencies expressed major concerns.

The Department of Interior indicated that “we do not think the risks inherent in proceeding without more environmental study and knowledge are acceptable.”

The EPA directly questioned the proposed berm’s effectiveness, suggesting there is no evidence that the project will stop oil from entering the marshes and estuaries because it is constructed only in front of the barrier islands and will not block the inlets and deepwater passes. In addition, EPA questioned whether a project that will take at least 6 to 9 months to build would be completed in time to have any impact on the spill.

As a coastal geologist who studies coastal storm impacts, it is clear to me that this berm, located just offshore of the barrier islands, will also be extremely susceptible to erosion. Indeed, it will begin to erode immediately upon completion. Even a simple understanding of coastal processes leads one to conclude that this sandy berm could disappear within a few months. Coincidently, the U.S. government’s Climate Prediction Center released its forecast for this year’s Atlantic Basin hurricane season on the same day the berm permit was issued. Federal scientists are predicting an incredibly busy season with up to 23 named storms and 8 to 14 hurricanes. Just one of these storms tracking near the proposed berm will wipe it out. At six feet above sea level, the berm will not have the elevation or sand volume to provide significant storm protection. In fact, depending on the track of the storm, it could potentially make the storm surge higher in some areas. The berm also could prevent the flushing of some oil out of the wetlands.

In the end, we have a project that is incredibly expensive. There has been little scientific review. It is questionable if the proposed berm will prevent oil from entering the wetlands it is designed to protect. The structure will be very short-lived. And there are many potential negative impacts of this structure on the coastal environment that have not been evaluated. Coastal dredging and filling can cause significant damage to marine organisms and local ecosystems as massive amounts of sand are dug up in one location and then deposited on the sea floor in another spot. In addition, building a 45-mile sand berm could alter tidal currents and lead to the erosion of natural barrier islands that protect the Louisiana coast from hurricanes.

Yes, we need to do something, but we need a better process for deciding what that best something is. I hope I’m wrong, but I fear that this permitted berm is not a viable solution.

Anyone out there think this project will be effective, will do more good than harm?