At Risk: The Human, Community and Infrastructure Resources of Coastal Louisiana

Environmental impact analyses are routinely undertaken when large engineering projects such as coastal restoration are undertaken. Traditionally, these involve detailed predictions of impacts that will occur to the physical and ecological components of the area of impact. In the case examined in this study, a series of projects have been proposed for restoring the barrier islands at the outer edge of the Louisiana coast with the goal of reducing wetland loss and breaking the force of storm surges in what we have referred to as the "shoreline protection zone" or SPZ. As is usual for environmental restoration projects, detailed predictions have been made of the ecological consequences for the "no-action" scenario and for various other restoration scenarios involving attempts to protect the SPZ. However, unlike traditional environmental impact analyses, which give only very terse predictions and descriptions of the likely impacts to the human activities and communities near a particular restoration project, in the current effort we have attempted to do a more thorough social impact assessment of the human activities present within the area that would be affected by whichever scenario occurs. As part of this research, we have also identified a smaller, particularly vulnerable area—the Barataria/Terrebonne Estuary System (BTES)—to describe in even more detail the human activities present there. The BTES is also the focus of a companion manuscript by Lindstedt in this issue; Lindstedt describes the renewable natural resources in this smaller area that are also at extreme risk. After a general description of the natural environment in the SPZ, there follows a detailed analysis of the human activities inside the SPZ within five general categories: (1) population and housing; (2) public infrastructure; (3) oil and gas infrastructure, production, and related economic impacts; (4) transportation infrastructure and related economic impacts; and (5) water management infrastructure.