Let Mother Nature tell you where to target specks and reds this month.
“O.K., Mr. Jones, I have some good news for you, and I have some bad news,” says your doctor. “The bad news is you have a fatal disease and will be dead in a couple of months. “The good news is that there’s a surgery that can heal you completely, but it’s going to cost $14 million, and you have to pay up front.”
You have full health coverage, so you run home and call your insurance company to let them know they need to fork over a check for $14 million.
Your insurance representative calls you back the next day with more “good” news.
“O.K., Mr. Jones, I got authorization today to issue you a check for $1.2 million.”
What is $1.2 million in that scenario? It’s a death sentence. A little bit of surgery isn’t going to cure your fatal illness. You need the full surgery, and you need it quick.
So it is with the state of Louisiana, which last month found out the federal government authorized the payment of $1.2 billion in federal money over the next 10 years to help stem the tide of Louisiana’s coastal land loss.
It’s a nice sentiment, but is so inadequate that it may be the first ring of the death knell of the Louisiana marsh. Scientists and other experts say it will take $14 billion to restore Louisiana’s coast.
Under the White House plan, Louisiana would be responsible for providing an additional $730 million, which brings the total to $1.9 billion. That’s a significantly smaller percentage than the $4 billion Florida had to come up with to fund its portion of the $8 billion Everglades Restoration Plan, but it’s still a heck of a lot of money for a state that’s suffering from the results of a government project (the leveeing of the Mississippi River) and an industry (oil and gas) that benefits the whole nation.
“Anything we get is a good thing, but it’s not enough, it’s really not,” said Kerry St. Pe of the Barataria Terrebonne National Estuary Program. “I’m not sure $14 billion is enough, to tell the truth.”
The authorization of the limited funding was also decried by some Louisiana politicians, including Rep. Chris John, D-Lafayette.
“To date, (the Bush administration has) shown a greater commitment to coastal restoration in Iraq than in Louisiana,” he said. “Unfortunately, this smacks all too much of election-year politics: a one-time payment meant to sway Louisiana voters in a presidential election year.”
St. Pe was choosing not to focus on that aspect of the situation.
“We need to forget the politics,” he said. “It’s going to cost a whole lot more than $1.2 billion if we don’t get the funding we need. I’m not sure they understand that yet. Something’s going to happen very soon that will cost more than $1.2 billion to fix.”
The most troubling potential fallout of the authorization of the money is that Congress and the Bush administration may feel they’ve already addressed the situation when Louisiana returns with its hat in its hand seeking more funding.
“I’m concerned they’ll feel like they’ve already met that problem,” St. Pe said. “That’ll be enough in their minds.”
It’ll be just enough for the patient to die a quick death.
