Jim Bradshaw: SW Louisiana seawall remains a pipe dream

There’s been talk of a seawall across coastal southwest Louisiana for more than a century, but most of the talk was about draining wetland, not blocking hurricanes, and most of the talk amounted to nothing more than talk.
The great promoter J. B. Watkins may have been the first to think halfway seriously about some sort of levee system in Cameron Parish.
His plan was  part  of a huge reclamation project beginning in 1853.
He told a New Orleans newspaper that he would use “the finest machinery which can be obtained,” and that “large drains … [and] levees will be constructed wherever necessary.”
He did in fact build a few levees with mud pumped from the wetland, but mud isn’t the best material to use to block water and his low-lying levees were eaten away pretty quickly.
Land reclamation was also the principal goal in 1911 when “engineers and capitalists” announced plans for a Cameron Parish seawall.
They may have been inspired by the Galveston seawall that was begun in 1902 after the devastating 1900 hurricane there.
The multimillion-dollar Cameron wall, they said, “would “enable the reclamation of some hundreds of thousands of wet land [sic] acreage” that would “be the equal of California in producing the highest grades of citrus fruits,” and other crops.
The chenieres in Cameron Parish were already known for their huge orange groves, so that was not an exaggeration.
In 1892, the New Orleans Picayune reported, “The future of southwest Louisiana can be assured financially because of its gigantic orange groves.
"In Cameron Parish alone, 1,500,000 of the finest oranges were produced. They are said to be the sweetest and best of all. … You can drive for 16 miles across Grand Chenier and see nothing  but orange groves."
A group of men from Kansas and California who were the principal investors reasoned that if more Cameron Parish land could be planted, there was even more profit to be made from its groves.
According to news reports,  “the Deering Harvester Company managers” were also investors in the project, and “not only will private enterprise aid in the development, but the Federal government will be asked to make appropriations” for the work.
Deering was one of the companies that later merged with several others to form International Harvester.
“The swamp lands are capable … of reclamation, at a moderate expense,” the investors said, “if there is some means of protecting them from the overflow by tide water and during the tropical storms which sometimes sweep the coast.”
The federal government presumably was asked to pay for all or part of that storm protection, but the government said it would cost too much and that effectively killed that scheme.
Hurricane protection was one of the major talking points when the Louisiana Intracoastal Seaway Association was formed in the late 1950s with big plans to turn the Intracoastal Canal into an inland seaway for small freighters.
Spoil from the dredging needed to widen and deepen the canal would be thrown up form a barrier against storm surge.
Unfortunately, the big project also came with a big price tag — several hundred million dollars — that was too much for either private backers or the government to handle.
It is also unlikely that spoil-bank levees would hold up against a big storm.
There have been renewed calls for a seawall since Hurricane Rita slammed Cameron in 2005, which have grown louder after the spate of more recent, and even stronger, storms.    
That’s spurred some action, but no seawall and no immediate plans for one.
The Army Corps of Engineers and the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority of Louisiana signed a partnership agreement for a $6.5 billion “Southwest Coastal Louisiana hurricane and storm damage risk reduction and coastal ecosystem restoration project” in 2022, but it does not include a seawall in the foreseeable future.
Most of the money spent in Cameron and Vermilion parishes will be to elevate buildings above the surge or spent to stabilize the  shoreline, not to block the surge itself.
The bugaboo seems to be the same as always — not enough money to do what needs to be done.
You can contact Jim Bradshaw at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.