‘He really turned the tide’: Oyster people cheer La. Gov. canceling $3 billion project funded by Deepwater Horizon settlement

The project to convert the deposits in the middle of Barataria was aimed at rebuilding up to 20 square miles (32 km) of the Earth in southeast Louisiana to combat sea level rise and corrosion on the Gulf coast. Money should be used in coastal restoration, and it was not immediately clear whether 618 million dollars actually spent the state must be returned, and federal trustees warned last year.

Conservation groups and other supporters of the project confirmed that it was an ambitious approach based on science to alleviate the worst effects of the fading coast line in a state where a football field was lost every 100 minutes. The project would have converted water -filled water from the Mississippi River to restore wetlands that disappear due to a group of factors, including sea level rise caused by climate change and the vast river dam system that suffocates the regeneration of natural lands.

“The flag has not changed, nor does it need to take urgent action,” said Kim Rayher, CEO of the coalition to restore coastal Louisiana. “What has changed is the political scene.”

While the project largely obtained support from the two parties and defended by the Governor of Democrat John Bill Edwards, Republican Governor Jeff Landre became an audio opponent after taking office last year. It has been bounced at the price and exaggerating the fears that the massive flow of fresh water would destroy the fisheries of the fish on which local communities depend on their livelihoods.

Landri said that the project “will” break “Louisiana’s culture of shrimp and harvesting and comparing it with government efforts a century ago to punish school students for speaking French Kajon.

“We fought this battle for a long time, but Landre’s ruler is the reason that we won this battle,” said Mitch Goric, head of the Louisiana Oister Labor Squad, who was suing the state about the environmental effects of the project. “He turned the tide.”

A group of federal agencies that oversees the settlement funds from the Gulf oil leakage for the year 2010, said in a statement on Thursday that the Mid-Parataria project “is no longer applied” for a set of reasons, including litigation and suspending the federal permit after the state issued a suspended order in the project.

A spokesman for the coastal protection and restoration organization in Louisiana confirmed to Associated Press that the state cancels the project.