Draft of 5-year coastal approach coming to Houma

The state agency in charge of prioritizing coastal restoration and protection projects will submit a draft of its five-year master plan for public review later this month in Houma.

The public is invited to review the 2012 Louisiana Coastal Master Plan from 1 to 7:30 p.m. Jan. 24 at the Houma-Terrebonne Civic Center, Room 3, 346 Civic Center Blvd. The public can also comment on the plan during a formal hearing that will begin at 5:30 p.m.

“All of us who do this are worried about plan fatigue,” said Simone Maloz, executive director of the non-profit coastal advocacy group Restore or Retreat. “I do ask people to go to a lot of different meetings. If they never go to another meeting again, I promise you this is the one to go to.”

The final plan, when approved by the state Legislature this year, will serve as the official priority list of about 400 coastal projects over the next five years.

The plan’s public comment period ends Feb. 25, and Maloz said people should take the time to understand and comment on the plan.

The Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority compiled the draft by using modeling programs that look at the cost and complementary aspects of grouped projects and the importance of the areas that would benefit, among other metrics.

Maloz said she has followed Davis Pond, shoreline initiatives, the Atchafalaya Basin and the Barataria Basin, which has many projects that scored well in individual modeling.

“Some of the modeling work that I saw was very specific individual projects, which gives you a snapshot of that, but then you do need to see the whole photo album, if you will, of all the projects together to see the full impact of it,” she said. “I want to see all the projects, I want to see their outcomes and then I want to know how they’re going to sew all of those projects together for a more complete picture of how we’re going to move forward.”

Windell Curole, general manager of the South Lafourche Levee District, said he wants to make sure the priority list “captures the facts.” He said a list based on modeling could turn out to be nothing more than a “bad guess.”

“Computer models, I’m not a great fan of them because unless your assumptions are absolutely correct and the data you put in there is accurate, computer models are nothing but a bad guess sometimes, and they try to use them to avoid political decisions,” he said.

Curole said he hopes to see the economic vulnerability of south Lafourche reflected in the plan, which he described as drifting toward U.S. Army Corps of Engineers modeling tactics based strongly on the population of an area.

“We just want to make sure that the importance of the area is treated seriously,” he said.

In addition to the five-year plan, the CPRA will present the fiscal year 2013 annual plan for public review. The annual plan will focus on projects the CPRA wants to develop or begin implementing before mid-summer of next year.

The plans will also be presented in New Orleans and Lake Charles this month.

More than 30 federal, state, academic, community, industrial and non-governmental organizations are included on the master plan’s development team.