On November 18, 2020, the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority (CPRA) was approved for $1.036 million in Council-Selected Restoration Component planning grants from the Gulf Coast Ecosystem Restoration Council’s (RESTORE Council) 2017 Comprehensive Plan Commitment and Planning Support Funded Priorities List (FPL).
The allocation will fund activities to facilitate collaboration with other RESTORE Council members, inform restoration project planning for future RESTORE FPLs, and inform Louisiana’s position on future FPL investments.
“We look forward to applying these planning grant funds from the Gulf Coast Ecosystem Restoration Council to advance several of the Governor’s critical second-term coastal priorities and to apply the best available science to our coastal program and our Coastal Master Plan,” said CPRA Chairman Chip Kline.
“We believe these ambitious activities will help keep our coastal program on the cutting edge of science and policy and will help inform not only our investments at the RESTORE Council but also create tools that other agencies, researchers, academics, stakeholders, and the general public can use into the future as well,” he added.
In addition to funding CPRA’s collaborative activities to plan for the next FPL, the grant funds will also be used for these four activities:
- Identification of Oyster Resource Zones ($200,000)
Funding will be used to compile and examine data to identify current oyster resource zones in Louisiana, capture and incorporate information on future change, and inform future development of a data-driven decision support tool to assist with project planning and oyster restoration. This information will be used to inform restoration project planning and collaboration with other RESTORE Council members under future RESTORE FPLs. - Lowermost Mississippi River Data Portal ($153,000)
CPRA will work with the U.S. Geological Survey to create a Mississippi River Data Portal that will manage, disseminate and visualize all tabular and spatial ecological, geophysical and engineering data generated by the State’s RESTORE Bucket 2 Lowermost Mississippi River Management Program. This activity will support river-related coastal protection and restoration planning, design, operations, maintenance and monitoring efforts and development of future RESTORE FPL project/program options. The data portal will aid the RESTORE Council in future funding decisions, and will be available for project managers, academics, stakeholders, and the general public. - Coastal Carbon-Capture Methodology Framework ($300,000)
CPRA will contract the evaluation of the state of the science on carbon capture methodologies and potentially a market analysis of tradeable carbon credit practices to provide a foundation for inform long-term planning for estimating carbon captured within conserved and restored wetlands under the Coastal Master Plan as it contributes to the Governor’s carbon emissions goals and for its potential value as a tradeable carbon credit. The information gathered and/or developed under this activity will be shared broadly with other Gulf states and federal Council Members and used by the State of Louisiana to inform future FPL investments as well as assisting the Council with improving its science-based decision-making processes. - Framework for Establishing a Model Repository ($290,000)
CPRA will task the Water Institute of the Gulf with developing a framework for collaboration and coordination necessary to stand up a publicly accessible model repository for coastal restoration projects for the State of Louisiana, and potentially the Gulf of Mexico. This effort will explore and document the feasibility of various options to develop a repository and centralized clearinghouse for numerical models and is designed to help support the RESTORE Council objective of improving science-based decision making processes as well as aid the State in development of future FPL proposals and identification of future FPL investments based on the goals and Priority Criteria from the RESTORE Act.
Photo of sunset on a Louisiana bayou by zmortero from Pixabay.