Our Vanishing Coast

Just the other day, I was visiting with Milton Kidd, a lifelong friend, fraternity brother, couzan, and my eye doctor. We were discussing the repairs to his mother's house on Bayou Teche across from downtown Franklin, LA. She wants to move back and Milton commented that is he is fixing it up witht the idea that it will flood everytime a hurricane comes their way. I have been totally depressed with our situation in Houma and know that my friends and neighbors in Lafourche, St. Charles, Orleans, Jefferson, Plaquemine,and St. Tammany are just as vulnerable. I would have never guessed that Franklin would be. The rest of the country, as I hear it, says, "well, we have given ya'll a bunch of money after Katrina and that should be enough. They don't get it that the Corp cut the wetlands off when they levied the Mississippi. Worse, they allowed inferior levees to be built so unsuspecting people built on slabs inside the levee systems. Lower Lafourche basks in pride that they have built a levee system and consequently many people have built on slabs inside the levee system. This is a ninth ward event that will happen. When people want to try a leaky levee system that has a chance of feeding the wetlands, they want to study it to death. Government tries to consider all possibilities and never can get it to work. When business innovates or tries a new idea, they go ahead and adjust as they see how it performs. IF THE LEAKY LEVEES DO NOT LEAK ENOUGH TO FEED THE MARSH--MAKE MORE LEAKS BUT BUILD THE DAMN LEVEE NOW. The Corps approach will be such that they will still be studying the problem when New Orleans is a quasi island surrounded by elevated highways connecting it to mainland Louisiana around Gonzales or Baton Rouge. WE NEED THE RIVER TO FLOW. Nourish our wetlands, rebuild our barrier islands. If we must, let us elevate our homes but GET THE RIVER BACK. We talk about genocide in Africa, in the Balkans, etc. The federal government is en effect causing the genocide of the cajun culture and the rest of us who happened to end up down here to provide energy and seafood for the rest of the country. It is a sad commentary to write this piece because it is hard to fathom that your own country does not care enough to say, we caused the problem, we must fix the problem. Maybe we have to say: "Hey you are going to lose blue crabs, white shrimp, brown shrimp, brown pelicans, egrets, tupelo gums, and bald cypress. Maybe then, just maybe, they will wake up and realize what is at stake here. There was a wonderful book written by a gay man about how AIDS started and how everyone ignored the problem unitl it was too late. I think it was called, And the Beat Goes On. Great book, great movie. They will have ti import actors to play the Cajuns and have to shoot in Savannah or Charleston to replicate New Orleans when they make the movie, And the Coast Vanished. Too bad, mon amis.