Cross posted for obvious reasons...

As Louisiana's hurricane-mauled barrier islands break up, last residents flee

Tuesday May 25, 2004 

By CAIN BURDEAU 

Associated Press Writer 

GRAND TERRE ISLANDS, La. (AP) Over the decades, hurricanes have torn apart these barrier islands and dashed people's hopes of making their homes on this picturesque spot on the rim of the Gulf of Mexico.

Failure is everywhere. At low tides, the remains of a sugar cane plantation can be seen in the water. A fort built in the mid-1800s sinks into the sea. On the back side of the island, what's left of Jean Lafitte's pirate settlement is under the waves.

Now, the Lyle St. Amant Marine Laboratory, a state fisheries research lab built about 40 years ago, will become the latest retreat from the Grand Terre Islands because officials said it was too costly to maintain in the harsh environment.

The lab's handful of resident biologists will move their computers, fishing gear, books and specimen to Grand Isle, a nearby barrier island packed with hotels and houses on stilts. Once they're in their new home, planned for 2006, nobody will be left on Grand Terre, which has split into two sections.

The Grand Terre islands have lost nearly three-fourths of their land since the early 1800s, mostly due to the battering force of hurricanes that toss beaches and rip up the islands' interiors.

``The shore gets closer and closer,'' says marine biologist John Dameier, who has worked at the lab for 28 years. ``We're basically beach-front property.''

The loss of barrier islands, which run parallel to the mainland and are built up by the action of waves and currents, has become one of the state's most pressing environmental concerns. They are the first line of defense against hurricanes and the advance of the Gulf's salt waters.

Since the early 1990s, over $34 million has been spent on rebuilding dunes and beaches on the islands, filling in breaches on them with dredged sand, installing fences to trap sand and planting black mangroves and cordgrass.

More multimillion dollar projects are going forward and under a new plan to save Louisiana's coast, millions of more dollars could be channeled to fight the loss of the islands, which protect the coast from erosion by surf and tidal surges.

But in the meantime, many places are vanishing under the sea.

Grand Terre has lost about 38 feet a year of land since the 1880s. Other barrier islands have fared even worse, with some losing 60 feet a year in the last 120 years.

``From here right through there is all gone,'' biologist Dameier says, running his finger across what was once shore in front of the lab on a map. Gone is the lab's airstrip built along the Gulf-facing shore. It was wiped out by Hurricane Juan in 1985.

In the 1880s, about 70 years after U.S. forces disbanded Lafitte's pirate settlement, Grand Terre was a single island made up of about 4,200 acres roughly shaped like a foot at the mouth of Barataria Bay south of New Orleans.

By 1932, according to geological surveys, Grand Terre was already eroding and had broken up into two large sections. The erosion continued, and geologists believe that between 1884 and 1988 the islands lost 2,929 acres.

``People say, 'Oh, why did Lafitte go to this little ratty-looking island?''' says Shea Penland, a geologist with the University of New Orleans and a barrier island expert. ``Well, in 1800, Grand Isle wasn't there, it was just a sand spit with a few trees on it. But Grand Terre was a single island and it was big enough to have a water table.''

Lafitte, sometimes described as a kind of south Louisiana Robin Hood with roads, a town and a national park named after him, turned Grand Terre into a settlement with warehouses and gambling halls. New Orleans businessmen flocked there to buy slaves and goods.

Grand Terre was so hospitable to human occupation that a sugar cane plantation operated on the island for decades after Lafitte left, and the U.S. military built Fort Livingston on the western side of the island as one of several coastal forts to protect New Orleans from attacks.

The fort teeters on the edge of the sea today and little remains of the plantation.

``Even the biologists don't want to live there anymore it must be bad,'' says Jody Auenson, a charter boat captain on Grand Isle.

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On the Net: Coastal erosion in Louisiana: www.lacoast.gov

http://cbsnewyork.com/national/Hurricanes-BarrierBre-aa/resources_news_html

George Myers