The race to restore Louisiana's wetlands and protect a way of life and economic driver is on.

We knew we had a coastal land loss problem in Louisiana, and we knew that it was bigger than Louisiana.

Billions of dollars spent on science planning, technology and engineering to build new land and shore up fragile coastlines and barrier islands.

And looking again at coastal restoration and at energy transition.

They are understood by Louisiana and of all stripes fundamentally as economic opportunities with environmental benefits combined with the hard work of volunteer hands in the dirt and the recycling of granular materials.

With the sand specifically, we're looking at how that sand can be safely and effectively used for coastal restoration here in Louisiana.

Defines the head on efforts and determination to tackle the challenges and seize the opportunities to restore the Louisiana coast.

Hello, I'm Marcia Kavanaugh.

In this edition of our continuing series about the Louisiana coast, we will look into how coastal restoration efforts range from multimillion dollar engineering projects to the sweat and toil of volunteers working to restore our cypress forests, grow oyster reefs, and replenish needed sand through recycling.

There's no disputing the fact that the threatened Louisiana coast has created serious challenges for us here in south Louisiana.

More than 2,000 square miles, the equivalent of the size of Delaware, have been lost.

But there is a strong willingness to confront the problems.

People want to stay home, not be pushed away by the forces of nature or rising insurance costs.

Protecting our coast is now a business big and small, starting with a multibillion dollar coastal master plan and trickling down to a basic Louisiana tasty temptation.

Enjoy a dozen beautiful raw oysters.

People come to New Orleans for the oysters.

That's what we're known for in Louisiana is the biggest exporter of oysters in the country.

And it's important, I think, for people to also know the ecological benefits of the oyster shell and that it, A. can be recycled and and B. why.

My name is Fiona Lightbody.

I am the Oyster Shell Recycling Program coordinator at the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana.

This is the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana's Restoration headquarters to our Oyster Shell recycling program, which started ten years ago.

It was started as a way to reconnect the New Orleans restaurant industry with the coast and the seafood industry.

Oyster shells are an incredibly valuable resource.

By reclaiming the shell from the restaurants.

We're not only helping restaurants partake in sustainability measures, we are reducing the waste that's going into landfill and we're also returning the shell to the water, which mitigates erosion and also helps grow new oysters.

We work with a local recycling company called R&R Recycling.

They pick up shells from restaurants three or five days a week, and then all of that shell comes down here to our restoration headquarters, where it cures in the sun for six months to a year and is turned every so often as well.

By the time it's ready to go back into the water, it's essentially rock.

Oysters are called ecosystem engineers because they kind of, they encrust on each other and they build up quite a solid structure.

And that's the oyster reef that we see today.

We have built five recycled shell reefs as of this year.

These oyster reefs underwater act as a sort of speed bump for this big storm surge push of water.

It's slowing erosion of the marshes around and then also it's going to help prevent all of that water hitting the coast right away.

My name is Carlo Clesi and I'm the co-owner of Clesis Seafood restaurant.

There was quite an abundance of shells leftover after the business that we have, and we wanted to make the best use of it.

And we figured, hey, if we can help the coastal erosion prevention and the seafood industry as a whole, what better way would it be to join the program?

Right now, we're actually up to about 80,000 pounds of shells that we've been able to contribute to the program.

There's a logistical advantage because I don't need to physically just dispose of the shells.

The program actually collects is in addition to that, there's actually a tax credit that we do receive at the end based off the poundages that we're able to provide.

We work with about 30 restaurants right now.

It's our hope that restaurants that are participating in the service right now will see that benefit and just help spread the word more about the program itself and also why recycling your shells is important.

It helps the restaurant, of course, and it helps the seafood industry and it helps prevent coastal erosion.

You can't go wrong with that.

From the benefits of oyster shells to multimillion dollar coastal engineering projects, Louisiana and its residents have taken the threats to the coast and way of life very seriously.

Since adapting the first Coastal Master Plan in 2007, More than $21 billion has been spent to complete projects to benefit 87 square miles, improve levees, and restore barrier islands.

The state's fourth Coastal Master plan, approved in 2023, details projects for the next 50 years at a cost of $50 billion more, which some say is providing a global model to other threatened areas.

My name is Steve Mathies, Im the global practice leader for coastal restoration with Stantec.

Mathies, a Louisiana native, now a global coastal consultant, played a part in the early days of the Louisiana coastal restoration effort.

You know, when we first started out way back when.

You know, we knew we had a coastal land loss problem in Louisiana and we knew that it was bigger than Louisiana.

You know, we were thinking that our issue was maybe a $100 million, not a multi-billion dollar problem and we thought at that time that we could save the coast.

We could put it back the way it was.

But I got to tell you that since Hurricane Katrina, things have changed dramatically.

As devastating as that was for us in the city of New Orleans.

The world's focus became New Orleans, and how are we going to survive?

And so we've taken that opportunity to tell our story in Louisiana.

And then they're starting to recognize that their coastal areas are threatened too by climate change.

So everyone in the world is saying, where do I get that project experience?

Then they look to Louisiana and say, What did you do?

Tell me about your shoreline restoration.

Tell me about, you know, hydrologic modification, tell you of the things that you guys did to help save the coast.

We know you're not there, but you've got a master plan that no one else can touch.

Michael Hecht, president and CEO of GNO Inc, recognizes the strides made by the state's coastal strategy, but feels more work needs to be done.

First of all, obviously it has to have a material impact on the sustainability of the coast and to some degree, we don't know yet whether we're going to do this, do that, because this is an unprecedented experiment in terms of its scale and in terms of its complexity.

But I think another part of us becoming a model is that we're going to save the coast when it pays for itself in order for this to be sustainable.

Over time, it's going to have to have an economic rationale.

It can't be supported from ever by things like the BP settlement or just government subsidy.

If we can not only save ourselves but be seen as the experts for the whole world in terms of our engineering, in terms of our building, in terms of our consulting, then we really have an economic model and that's going to allow us to have the cash again to save ourselves, but also create economic opportunities.

Quantitatively, We know from the Coastal Master Plan that it's projected to create over 11,000 jobs and those are obviously building jobs, civil engineering jobs.

But then the next question is, are we actually training our local population, our local residents, to get those jobs?

And then finally, and I think this is really important, we can't change the weather, but we are in charge of our engineering.

And if you look at a disaster like Katrina, it was actually not a natural disaster because let's be very clear, Katrina was an engineering disaster that occurred when all the outfall canals, the drainage canals in New Orleans and MRGO reversed and then the T walls were under engineered.

So if we can learn to think now about how to build smarter, how to prevent harm to people and property, when we have these natural events, then we will become truly resilient and then the world will be the path to our doorstep in order to to purchase our engineering, our consulting, our building.

Because rising sea levels and weather volatility are a global phenomenon, we just happen to be kind of the wet tip of the spear.

I mean, I remember when I started out, I mean, I had a lobbyist that would get fired up about coastal and they told me point blank that coastal land loss would never be an issue on a statewide election for Louisiana.

No one cared.

And I look at it and I'm like, how wrong they were.

There's a lot more to do.

But if we don't do it, what we lose, it's important not just to Louisiana, but it's important, you know, to the rest of the nation.

Understanding the importance of saving the Louisiana coast while reducing landfill waste was the motivation behind two Tulane University students Franziska Trautmann and Max Steitz to establish a business with a title that reflects their perspective.

Glass half full in four short years, it's grown from a backyard operation to a major recycling company in the New Orleans metro region, creating a product needed for coastal rebuilding.

Sand.

Glass half full started like most good ideas over a bottle of wine.

My name is Franziska Trautmann.

I am the co-founder and CEO of Glass.

Half full.

My co-founder and I were drinking a two buck Chuck from Trader Joe's when we realized that like most bottles in the state of Louisiana, it would end up in a landfill.

And we thought that was pretty silly.

And once we remembered really from like middle school science class, that glass comes from sand.

We knew that if we could turn glass back in the sand, that sand had so many local uses.

And so we kind of jumped into action once we realized that.

Things happened really quickly when we started we were seniors at Tulane in 2020.

Right before COVID hit, we had started collecting glass from neighbors and friends around the uptown Tulane campus, and we were bringing it all back to a backyard on Broadway Street, where we had this really small machine.

We were crushing one bottle at a time, and almost instantly things became overwhelming with the amount of glass we were receiving.

The amount of support that people wanted to give us.

After COVID, we moved into a very small facility uptown that we quickly filled with glass and grew out of.

And then we're in the facility that we're in today, which is 40,000 square feet.

We now recycle about 4 million pounds of glass every single year, and we pick up from hundreds of bars and restaurants around town, as well as residents in the area.

So once the glass reaches the facility, we put it through our processing machinery and turn it into a mixture of sand and gravel.

And with the sand specifically, we're looking at how that sand can be safely and effectively used for coastal restoration here in Louisiana.

So in 2021, we partnered with Tulane University scientists and researchers and were awarded a National Science Foundation grant that supported three years of research looking at utilizing recycled glass and for coastal restoration here in Louisiana.

And all that research has been going so well that it's enabled us to do implementation projects with partners like CRCL and also we just completed our islands project where we built two islands, one with recycled glass sand and one with native sediment.

And we'll track the differences over time.

This is our, we call it medium sand, so it's not the finest sand that we make, it's not the coarsest.

And this is specifically the size that researchers determined was the most effective for restoration in our wetlands, here.

I think we're up to over 300,000 pounds of sand that we've put out into coastal projects.

And it's not to say that we think we're solving these huge solutions with turning glass into sand, but I think we're contributing to the solutions of these two major issues facing our state.

And that's the whole reason we're glass half full.

We want to be a part of those solutions and continue to improve that.

In addition to community support.

Glass half full also won the 2021 Startup Saint Bernard Competition created by the Meraux Foundation which is also helping the business relocate to Saint Bernard.

Meraux also partners with the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana in the Oyster Shell Recycling program and tree planting.

Coastal advocacy groups often gather at the foundation's home site at Docville Farm on the banks of the Mississippi River.

As the Meraux Foundation, we love to host community events, we use Docville as an outreach tool.

On a recent spring evening, groups with the Central Wetlands Reforestation Collective came together to recruit volunteers to help with planting trees in the marsh to boost the growth of South Louisiana's coastal forest, which has been decimated by coastal loss.

We planted 3,900 trees, which we didn't really at first anticipate to do By engaging the community in these meetings and, you know, letting them know about, they become more aware about what their efforts are doing.

This makes for a stronger community.

Metairie resident Missy Landry heard the call.

So this is strictly just the planting of the trees of the saplings.

So some of our main programs are revegetation, so that's going to be tree planting, maybe marsh grass planting.

I believe that everyone should have input and help in some capacity so that we actually have a state and a coast.

Left for our children and grandchildren.

These are all from seed from last year.

These are Cypress.

This is only a year.

It's already to the bottom here.

You can see some of the roots there.

My name is Blaise Pezold.

I'm the coastal and environmental program director for the Meraux Foundation, or Docville Farm.

So the Meraux Foundation owns about 26,000 acres outside of levee protection.

The majority are in Saint Bernard Parish.

As we keep losing that land, it makes us more and more vulnerable to storm surges.

We want to try to slow down our land loss rates so we slow down our flooding if it's possible.

But my job is to focus on that, try to stay positive and try to build coalitions within the coastal communities because there's a lot of division at times.

This is our first year of planting.

I want to say we did around 7500 trees this year and over the next three years we'll do the same.

So it's about 30,000 trees and 30,000 native grass plugs.

in that one basin in the central wetlands is an area that spans from the Lower Ninth Ward, the triangle back there through Chalmette and Arabi, all the way down to Verret.

This is a really catastrophic event that we're living through in a time that we're living through.

But we also see that huge opportunity to make up some ground there.

I know just from the events that I've done, we just get more and more people and I feel like we're actually building more of a local volunteer base, which is something that wasn't always there.

We're getting these midweek kind of regular folks that come out there and plant with us and have a good time and feel like they did something good for their community.

And it's really nice to see that.

And Missy Landry can be added to that number.

All right.

It's okay.

See you there.

Along with the major engineering projects in the Coastal Master Plan.

Community engagement is a big part of the effort to restore the coast from the Saint Bernard communities, hugging the Mississippi River to those nestled among the bayous in Lafourche and Terrebonne Parishes.

Residents are involved in the coastal restoration effort as wetland loss creeps closer and closer to home.

My name is Michael Massimi, Invasive Species and Marine programs coordinator for the Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary Program.

BTNEP is a national estuary program and there are 28 of them around the country where programs under the Environmental Protection Agency, the EPA, which long ago carved out special protections for estuaries which are nationally significant.

They're highly biologically productive areas, their coastal areas where rivers meet the sea.

And they require special protections because they're important nurseries for fisheries.

In coastal Louisiana, our estuary is particularly important because of the Mississippi River and because of the vast and diverse cultures and populations of people that have settled here over the centuries.

The Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary Program began in 1991, and by 1996 we had a comprehensive conservation and management plan put together to try to preserve and protect this estuary.

We use the stakeholder approach, so the management conference is an example of this stakeholder driven approach.

So there's representatives on this management conference from the shrimp industry, the chemical industry, oil and gas, various universities, state, local and civic governments, federal resource agencies, the Coast Guard, parish leaders.

So it's a very broad based mix of individuals.

And, you know, when you put the oil and gas guy next to the shrimp guy, they don't always agree on the best solutions for the estuary.

But when they do, that's a very powerful thing.

And consensus can really drive implementable plans toward solutions.

BTNEP has been involved in a wide variety of projects from migratory bird protections, the estuary programs in general being under EPA world, a water quality program to water quality as a major focus of invasive species, cultural and community engagement and outreach.

So basic science education, teaching people about coastal processes, which is very important for, you know, climate change and our future here on the coast.

People are engaged with the environment more than they have been in the past.

Definitely nothing focuses the mind like the imminent threat of a storm approaching.

People are aware of sea level rise and climate change and people are aware of subsidence and the disappearing coastal marshes that we have.

Southern Louisiana, Coastal Louisiana has become a center of excellence globally for coastal restoration.

I'm Archie Chaisson, the Lafourche Parish President.

A former BTNEP management conference member and coastal manager for Lafourche Chaisson is now in his second term as parish president.

He's seen the changes brought on by coastal loss, the devastation caused by Hurricane Ida in 2021 and the toll it's taken on the parish residents.

His focus is on what needs to be done to protect his community.

Yeah, we've seen it a lot post Ida world.

You know, we lost about 110 square miles of real estate because of Ida.

You know, for a lot of years, we have taxed ourselves in Lafourche to build a hurricane protection system, especially in lower Lafourche and south Lafourche.

So everything we can do to put anything back around that levee system and further beyond that is really where the focus is.

We also put an intense focus around Port Fourchon, for us the port is our economic driver here in Lafourche Parish.

So it's protecting that asset as well as it is a key struggle for us, making sure that the barrier islands around it reduce storm surge, reduce those wave actions, and then working with the port to actually do some beneficial use as they continue to dredge the port to get the deeper depths to expand their opportunities.

How do we put that material to the best use to not only protect it, but just also renourish nature.

Land loss has also meant some population loss for Lafourche, so we saw about a 7% loss because of Hurricane Ida, but we've seen a tremendous shift northward to get away from, you know, rising insurance rates and things like that that are driven by the coastal land loss.

But we're losing that little bit of cultural sensitivity because they're not living next to grandma and going to have Sunday lunch anymore and speaking French at the table.

There are a whole bunch of groups who are, you know, so hyper focused on coastal Louisiana because there are a lot of potential opportunities in spite of the challenges.

Right.

And I think for us, hardheads that don't want to go anywhere, we're going to continue to focus on that because we want to continue to live here.

And I think if we can get around some of the bureaucracies and some of the politics of it and actually put these things into practice and get to work on them, I think coastal Louisiana looks really well.

So I think it's something that we're just going to adapt to and we're going to overcome.

So how are Louisiana coastal communities coping?

Will they stay or will they go?

Some Lafourche and Terrebonne residents who are on the frontlines of the coastal loss battle share their thoughts.

My name is Haley Gambille, I work for Louisiana Sea Grant.

My name is Jonathan Foret, I'm the executive director for the South Louisiana Wetlands Discovery Center.

I'm Kerry St. Pé, I'm the retired director of the Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary Program.

Dwayne Bourgeois, I'm executive director for the North Lafourche Levee District.

Theresa Dardar with the Pointe-au-Chien Indian Tribe.

When I grew up, people lived in relative safety.

But nowadays as we lose the coast, as we lose land masses between us and the Gulf, it's increased the effect of storm surges.

There's nothing to protect us anymore.

And it's because of the threat of your house being destroyed.

It's because of the increase in insurance rates, people just moving away.

One of the things that we saw after Ida was the destruction of a lot of our community gathering spaces, not to mention the schools.

And we're seeing a lot of those things now moving north.

So if they're having to travel north for those amenities, then people are just going to naturally begin moving to where those amenities are.

And it was definitely the culture and the sense of community that drew me here, but being a young person and trying to make a community of young people is very hard because there are not a lot of young families that do have the opportunity to stay, I think, and they are choosing to move.

Weve lost a lot over the years.

And so we've lost a few families after storms, but usually they all want to come back like after Ida.

So we've lost three families, but we've lost so much.

So much land.

We are seeing things changing.

We're seeing the salt regime much further into the basin than it was before.

But we're also seeing that we can we are turning the tide.

We are making a difference.

Unfortunately, we have to draw a line in the sand and leaves some people out and it leaves some people in.

And that's a difficult thing.

But we had to work with the resources, we had the natural ridges but right now we're just trying to get that first level of protection on the ground.

The loss of population because of land loss issues points to the conclusion that we need to restore it quickly.

We have to rebuild it with sediment and you can sustain it with fresh water diversions.

You can't do it quickly.

But we have to do it quickly.

So I work very extensively with the commercial fisheries, specifically shrimp, and we see a lot of different things happening in that industry that are very bleak and dire graying of the fleet.

So the fleet captains are very old.

I think there are some that are maintaining hope that give me as a young person and having a young family hope and an opportunity to be here.

I feel that we're constantly put under the stress of surviving the next storm and picking up the pieces.

As much as I want to live here, as much as I want to stay here.

It's going to be inevitable that there is a shift.

I don't want to say this.

I think we're past being able to save things and successfully live as communities, especially in southernTerrebonne.

I'm just seeing it with the insurance rates like people just can't take anymore.

Well, we have hope.

We plan to live the rest of our days, you know, in Pointe-aux-Chene.

But we're trying, we're going to save our mounds because we don't want to desert our community because our ancestors are there.

I think, yeah, if nothing is done on the outside of the levees, well, I think, you know, eventually our communities will be lost.

You can't lose hope if you lose hope.

To me, you just as soon, lay down and die.

We can't rebuild Louisiana as it was 100 years ago.

There's more tendency for, I would say, the older generation to keep just moving up.

But we're not really leaving the area.

And the younger generation is much more flexible in the idea that, well, I could kind of get further away and then come back and visit and not lose everything.

We've got a big oil and gas sector right now.

Right.

But there's a lot of strain on the oil and gas sector right now.

If we don't protect this same infrastructure with some of the things we're trying to do, it's that same infrastructure that's going to do the renewable energies in the Gulf of Mexico.

And we're seeing the ability to adapt to those things, which could keep everything together.

Right.

People have to have a job to stay here, too.

And it's not just about the culture.

As long as we can maintain some of the land and some of the industry, you know, and I'm talking fisheries as well, then we maybe have a chance of holding on to some of the culture.

I have guarded optimism that we are able to stay here.

Right.

But we need help.

We need this to get out there and show the federal government that we need help and we're worth saving.

And that's kind of where I feel.

I agree.

I agree, we're worth saving.

The fight to save the coast continues at different levels, from big projects to using everyday items in an effort to protect what we have today and build it stronger for tomorrow.

Looking to the future also includes nurturing a workforce to get the job done because meeting the challenges and seizing the opportunities to restore the Louisiana coast will continue for generations to come.