To See Louisiana’s Coastal Loss is To Believe and Understand It | The Times-Picayune
CPRA engineer Rudy Simoneaux (2nd from R) leads members of the media on a tour of the LSU Center for River Studies in Baton Rouge. (Photo by Brett Duke)
A recent tour of the new, $18 million LSU Center for River Studies at the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority building in Baton Rouge left me with three thoughts:
This is an accomplishment Louisianians can be proud of.
Why isn’t something like this in New Orleans?
It has one glaring, unacceptable omission.
First the good news. Most headlines proclaiming “Louisiana ranked among states with . . .” introduce embarrassing stories. As in, “among states with lowest literacy rates, highest poverty rates, lowest health scores,” etc., etc. and etc. Basically, people think of us as a place to eat great food, hear good music and be charmed by those quaint good-time folks who live here — not an incubator of innovative science and engineering.
But that has actually been happening here.
Ironically our greatest crisis and failure — the destruction of the coastal zone — has been the catalyst for what is our greatest scientific achievement: The Coastal Master Plan. Our 50-year race for survival has created the most advanced climate science-based climate adaptation plan in the nation. We are actually exporting science and engineering that has given birth to a whole new industry: the water economy. Yet few people are aware of that, even Louisiana residents.
Those accomplishments are impossible to miss with a visit to the Center for River Studies. Some of it is on display in the football field-sized working model of the lower Mississippi River. Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority (CPRA) engineers and LSU students can use it to gain insight into many of the key questions surrounding the controlled river-sediment diversions critical to saving some of the coast as sea level rises and our sediment-starved, canal-sliced deltas sink.
“We’ll be able to see how much land each diversion might build, how a number of diversions will work together, and how they will affect shipping,” said Rudy Simoneaux, the CPRA engineer who helped design the center.
“We have very advanced computer models that provide the same information, but they take much longer to get results. Scale models give us answers much quicker and we can make adjustments to designs much easier than you can with computer models. And we can use them to compare results from the computer models.”
While the working model provided an eye-popping example of the state’s cutting-edge engineering, research and education, the first half of the building — the visitor center — really grabbed my imagination.
Read the rest of the article at The Times-Picayune.
