Artificial barrier island plan awaits approval from Corps of Engineers

By Richard Rainey, The Times-Picayune
May 17, 2010, 6:27PM Gov. Bobby Jindal said the state expects to know by the end of the week if the Army Corps of Engineers will green-light a $350 million project to rebuild Louisiana’s barrier islands as a natural shield against the massive oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico. Jindal said he has applied for an emergency federal permit to begin dredging and dumping sand into 40 gaps in the scythe-like chain of islands that stretch from St. Mary Parish almost to Mississippi. Should the corps approve the permit, the operation could begin in 10 days, he said. “The dredging plan helps to protect us against oil, helps to protect us against hurricane surges, helps to protect us against further erosion,” he said. The dredging project, the brainchild of two Dutch organizations, is the most dramatic in a series of responses meant to keep oil out of the state’s fragile estuaries and marshlands. Jindal said the project was initially estimated at $200 million, but that price rose when federal regulators required the dredging operations take place farther from the islands’ fragile ecosystems. “This is absolutely crucial,” he said during a news conference in Kenner. “We don’t want a drop of oil to hit our coast. It would be much easier for us to clean this up off of these barrier islands, off these sandy beaches than it would be to try and clean it after the fact in these interior wetlands.” …