Elevated Houses and Multiple Lines of Defense in the Louisiana Wetlands and in the Missouri and Tennessee Wetlands

In January as we were all talking about the inauguration of a new president and his stimulus program, I wrote several times about infrastructure as stimulus. I included this graphic that comes from the Comprehensive Recommendations Supporting the Use of the Multiple Lines of Defense Strategy to Sustain Coastal Louisiana, published in August 2007. The writers’ strategy [...]

“No Net Loss of Wetlands” Wetlands as Infrastructure

It has been almost twenty years since President George H.W. Bush pledged “No net loss of wetlands.”
This year Louisiana will have, for the first time in a very long time, “no net loss of wetlands.” Louisiana has a surplus and much of it is going into wetland restoration, 4,000 acres restored in 2009.
This year folks [...]

Conflicting Demands: Levees and Wetlands

 
The Flood of 2008  breached several agricultural levees along the Upper Mississippi in Henderson, Hancock, and Adams Counties in Illinois. 
The farmers who till the 4-mile-wide floodplain here were wiped out for the summer. The village of Meyer, right on the Mississippi, saw its population reduced from 40 people to 10. The flood caused $80 million [...]

Grand Isle and the Spring Migration

 
Spring is here and its wet in Waterloo, Illinois. Robins and grackles are bathing in the puddles in the grass.  The ganders are jousting, their necks extended like lances, vying for who gets which nesting place on which pond. They will continue this behavior until the fledglings are out of the nest and swimming in [...]

Infrastructure–The Stimulus Bill

 
The Corps will receive $4.6 billion nationwide, including $2 billion for waterways construction of which $500 million will go to repair locks and dams and $200 million for dam safety.
Only projects that have received previous funding are eligible for stimulus funds. The Corps lay out priorities and accelerate existing contracts or fund projects that can [...]

Infrastructure: Morganza-to-the-Gulf Hurricane Protection

 
 
 

 
 
During the Fall of 2006 it was apparent at Dulac, Lower Dulac, and on Bayou du Large that the activities the marshes generate–the shrimping, the crabbing, the fishing, and the new fishing camps raised on stilts–disguised the disaster than had happened the year before and the disaster happening underfoot. The land is sinking at the [...]

Political Art Redux

Tomorrow is a new day.

Political Art–American Flags, Louisiana Edition

 
In February 2007 I made a trip to Louisiana to make photographs of the coastal wetlands for my book, The Mississippi: a Visual Biography, which the University of Missouri Press will publish in June 2009.
 
It was a year and a half after Katrina and my third trip since the previous October. I would make two [...]