Louisiana is expected to see more than $1 billion of coastal restoration work in the next two years with $489 million of projects under construction and another $600 million of projects scheduled to start by 2015.
Kyle Graham, executive director of the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, spoke at the State of the Coast conference in mid-March. Louisiana has been promised nearly $2 billion in Clean Water Act and criminal fines from BP and Transocean for their role in the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Those funds, along with other sources, are expected to fuel a large number of projects in the coming years.