Ain't There No More

A HARROWING ACCOUNT OF COASTAL EROSION, LONG NEGLECT, AND A MAN-MADE DISASTER IN THE BAYOU STATE

For centuries, outlanders have openly denigrated Louisiana's coastal wetlands residents and their stubborn refusal to abandon the region's fragile prairies tremblants despite repeated natural and, more recently, man-made disasters. Yet, the cumulative environmental knowledge these wetlands survivors have gained through painful experiences over the course of two centuries holds invaluable keys to the successful adaptation of modern coastal communities throughout the globe. As Hurricane Sandy recently demonstrated, coastal peoples everywhere face rising sea levels, disastrous coastal erosion, and, inevitably, difficult lifestyle choices.

Along the Bayou State's coast the most insidious challenges are man-made. Since channelization of the Mississippi River in the wake of the 1927 flood, which diverted sediments and nutrients from the wetlands, coastal Louisiana has lost to erosion, subsidence, and rising sea levels a land mass roughly twice the size of Connecticut. State and national policymakers were unable to reverse this environmental catastrophe until Hurricane Katrina focused a harsh spotlight on the human consequences of eight decades of neglect. Yet, even today, the welfare of Louisiana's coastal plain residents remains, at best, an afterthought in state and national policy discussions.

For coastal families, the Gulf water lapping at the doorstep makes this morass by no means a scholarly debate over abstract problems. Ain't There No More renders an easily read history filled with new insights and possibilities. Rare, previously unpublished images documenting a disappearing way of life accompany the narrative. The authors bring nearly a century of combined experience to distilling research and telling this story in a way invaluable to Louisianans, to policymakers, and to all those concerned with rising sea levels and seeking a long-term solution.

South Louisiana native CARL A. BRASSEAUX, Lafayette, Louisiana, former director of the Center for Louisiana Studies, has spent a lifetime studying the peoples and cultures of the Louisiana coastal plain. He is the author of more than three dozen books and more than one hundred scholarly articles, including Acadian to Cajun: Transformation of a People, 1803-1877 and Creoles of Color in the Bayou Country, both published by University Press of Mississippi. He is a former Louisiana Writer of the Year. DONALD W. DAVIS, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, has been involved in coastal-related research for more than forty years on the wide array of renewable and non-renewable resources vital to the use of the wetlands. His work has appeared in numerous journals including Annals of the American Association of American Geographers, Shore and Beach, Journal of Soil and Water Conservation, Louisiana Conservationists, and Louisiana History.