By Elizabeth Skree
Great news for the gulf! On Thursday, in a 76-22 bipartisan vote, the U.S. Senate passed an amendment to the transportation bill – the RESTORE Act – which would ensure that 80 percent of Clean Water Act (CWA) fines from the gulf oil spill are dedicated to gulf environmental and economic restoration. A few weeks earlier, the House passed a similar amendment that would also dedicate 80 percent of fines towards gulf restoration. Next, the two chambers will work together to resolve the differences between the bills, a process that will hopefully lead to enactment of this historic legislation.
Outside of Congress, settlement talks have continued in earnest between the federal government and BP over the spill, including negotiations about how many billions of dollars in CWA fines could be used to launch comprehensive, long-term ecosystem restoration in the gulf. Meanwhile, scientists and state officials have been busy finalizing Louisiana’s 2012 Coastal Master Plan, a comprehensive, 50-year restoration strategy for the state.
While we applaud this good news, we know that there are still many real challenges facing the Mississippi River Delta. Every hour in Louisiana, an area of coastal land the size of a football field vanishes under water. Since the 1930s, almost 1,900 square miles of wetlands – an area about the size of Delaware – has disappeared from the Louisiana coast.
For more than 35 years, Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) has been working in the Mississippi River Delta, advocating for large-scale restoration projects to restore and revitalize the region. We are working to instill a sense of urgency and a national commitment to a bold restoration plan for the area.
As a companion to "Decades of Destruction," in their a new video, EDF’s Mississippi River Delta Restoration team tells the story of their vision for saving and restoring America’s largest delta:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyhfJnWw9rg
“To get to the solution, we need a bold new vision, one that allows society to get what it needs from the river and allows the wetlands to get what they need to survive. Instead of managing the river, we need to learn to build with the river, letting its powerful flow naturally replenish the wetlands that support a healthy Gulf Coast and create the conditions for a powerful economy.”
“Environmental Defense Fund has taken a leadership role in forming a broad coalition of national and environmental groups to implement this bold new vision. We are the catalyst for a major societal change that will benefit not just the wetlands, but the entire gulf region and indeed [Thomas] Jefferson's America that depends on a healthy delta.”
To find out how you can support EDF’s vision to restore the Mississippi River Delta, please visit our website: www.edf.org/restore.
Related Links
EDF releases big picture video "Before the BP Oil Disaster: Decades of Destruction" [Restoration and Resilience]
