I received a free electronic copy of this study from Netgalley, Carl A. Brasseaux, and University Press of Mississippi. Thank you all, for sharing your fine work with me.

This is an extensive look into the damage done to the Mississippi delta region by previous damming and leveeing over the last century and more, in an effort to relieve flooding. This is the same sort of damage you will see in western river basins after damming, multiplied by x5 or x8 due to the massive amount of water and soil that annually travel down the Mississippi - the nation’s largest drainage basin drains about 41% of the contiguous United States into the Gulf of Mexico at an average rate of 470,000 cubic feet per second. Because the water doesn't slow and dabble as it once did all the soil and minerals wind up in the Gulf of Mexico - and Louisiana at the current escalating level of loss is in serious trouble. Between 1956 and 1978 more than 294,000 acres of coastal marsh (460 square miles) became open water. We continue to lose 18 to 22 square miles per year.

Add in misuse of the land, storm surges and hurricane damage. Since 1947 Louisiana has suffered through Hurricanes Flossy, Audrey, Ethel, Carla, Hilda, Betsy and Camille, Juan, Andrew, Georges, Isadore, Ivan, Cindy, Ernesto, Katrina, Rita, Gustav, Ike, Irene, etc. Each onslaught of storm surge destroys more of the coastline, marshes and trembling prairies, and allows a creeping front of salt water to moving inland.

"Dozens of 19th century communities including St. Malo, Manila Village, Bassa-Bassa, Alluvial City, Coon Road, Daisy, Chong Song, Cabinish, Camp Dewey, Dunbar, Falia, Balize, Avoca Island, Nichols, Ostrica, Seabreeze, Doullet's Canal, Oysterville, Perry, English Lookout, Fisherman's Village, Cheniere Camidnada, Yankee Camp and many others - now exist only as vestigial Memories in the region's historical literature, for their respective sites now lie beneath the waves of encroaching Gulf Waters or as clusters of aging pilings. The economic infrastructure that once sustained these lost settlements has also vanished."

And then we have the Deepwater Horizon disaster.... This is not just a problem for Louisiana. Every American will be impacted in one way or another by the loss of this special place.