Projects to protect and rebuild Louisiana’s coast would be accelerated under a draft update to the state’s coastal master plan. But, for the first time, the plan concedes that no amount of land-building will save portions of the coast from subsidence and sea-level rise.
Based on new data, the 2017 update forecasts that the state will lose between 1,207 and 4,123 sq miles of land in the next 50 years. Previous plans had forecast no net land loss under some scenarios.