The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has given the final go-ahead for a $2.3-billion sediment diversion project in the Barataria basin in Louisiana, near the Mississippi River, where climate change and damage from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon drilling platform collapse have battered coastal estuaries.
According to the Louisiana Coastal Protection Authority, the Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion project will restore river sediment flows into the basin, which has one of the world's highest land-loss rates and was one estuary hardest hit by pollution from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, a problem that was exacerbated by federally-built river levees.