Cajun Residents & Towns Cling To Remnants Of Home & Tradition As Gulf Takes Back The Land - NYT

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The Louisiana coast depended for thousands of years on the routine overflow of the Mississippi River to deposit its sediment load and build land. But, beginning around the 1930s, in order to save lives and cities, the federal government built massive levees to constrain and control the river, effectively stopping it from doing what nature wants it to do. As a result, for the past 70 years or so, the sinking of the delta coast has continued unabated. As salt water pushes inland from the gulf, it kills wetlands and marshes, habitat for wildlife and fish, and is increasingly threatening homes for many thousands of people.

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A few minutes farther down the road, as one reaches Leeville, the reality of land loss is unmistakable. Tombs from the old cemetery pop above water at odd angles, a macabre reminder that the dead were buried in land that is not there anymore. One can also see it in the so-called ghost trees that line Highway 1, the remains of grand oaks that drowned as the bayou expanded and became saltier.

It can be heard in the anguished stories of shrimpers whose numbers are dwindling in the face of high fuel costs and foreign competition. (Louisiana shrimp can be hard to find even in Louisiana. The back of a bag of “New Orleans Style Shrimp” at a local supermarket reveals that the provenance is Thailand.) Land loss exacerbates the problem. “We’re overwhelmed with foreign shrimp because there’s a ton of countries putting shrimp out there so cheap, there’s really no demand for our shrimp, specifically,” said Ricky Polkey, a shrimper.

“The land being gone the way it is, it makes our season shorter,” he added. “The shrimp size has been very small because they don’t have a place to hide, where they would hold up and grow in the marshes before going out to the gulf. It seems we work all year for less than a dollar a pound.”

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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/25/us/25louisiana.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1219684434-s6r7+cRJCI9bttL4Vjbfwg