Blue Tech Delta: Reimagining the Louisiana Estuary’s Future
The State of Louisiana faces a critical and existential choice in its history.
Either,
lose vast stretches of the coastal, delta, and bayou regions to rising seas, displacing thousands of families and entire communities, disrupting the local economy, and erasing the cultural heritage that these regions support.
Or,
Become a success case, global laboratory, and industry leader in the development of technologies and methods for the preservation and regeneration of degenerating delta regions around the world (while safeguarding its own cultural heritage).
An Uncertain Future
Three weeks after 50 levees and floodwalls around New Orleans failed during Hurricane Katrina in 2005, its levees were breached again in Hurricane Rita. (Getty Images)
The goal of the Blue Tech Delta initiative is to reimagine the future of the Louisiana Estuary as a global laboratory and expo center for regenerative marine infrastructure innovations. These mariculture and floating city technologies will not only transform the regional economy, they will also offer a viable stay-in-place option to communities currently under threat from the impacts of storm damage and rising flood waters.
Benefits of the Blue Tech Delta Initiative
Improved water quality from nutrient harvesting will significantly improve seafood yields, sport fishing, and aquatic habitat
Establishment of Disaster Risk Reduction protocols, partnerships, and scenarios that will maximize community resiliency in response to mounting threats from regional natural hazards, while offering marketable solutions to coastal communities facing similar threats
Floating regenerative industry design and deployment will grow and diversify the economies of low-lying communities currently at risk
Economic diversification through capitalization on the untapped potential for algae technology in drug discovery, biofuels, specialty oils, and a range of chemicals
Market share growth in production of the 136 billion Liters of renewable biofuels by 2022 called for by the U.S. Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007
Scaling of critical delta sediment restoration projects without the displacement of communities that are already showcasing floating infrastructure and housing
BACKGROUND
Louisiana’s gulf coast is forever changed. Currently southern Louisiana loses one football field of land every hour and a half. These losses are caused by a menacing combination of subsidence in levy-protected areas that have been isolated from seasonal flood cycles, reduced sediment loads that have been interrupted by upstream lock and dam systems, and climate change-induced sea level rise that is dramatically increasing the size and frequency of gulf storms and king tide events. The resulting losses in habitable and arable land have already erased communities from the map and triggered mass migration to higher ground, forever changing the local lifestyles and disrupting the livelihoods of those people who have been displaced. To date the engineering options for combating land loss (e.g. building higher levies, artificially flooding of levied areas with sediment-rich flood waters, etc.) do not provide long term solutions for local communities to stay in place and maintain their livelihoods and lifestyles in the region. As a result, the Louisiana gulf coast is in the throws of an inevitable cultural, economic, and demographic transformation.
“Multiple benefits and revenue streams will be generated from a mix of aquatic agriculture for food additives, sustainable seafood harvesting, biofuel production, livestock feed, and carbon sequestration”
SOLUTIONS
Float and Fill Solution Sets
If Southern Louisiana is to directly address the eminent threat of land loss from the compounding threats of land subsidence and rising sea levels, the communities most impacted will need to navigate a comprehensive transformation in their relationship to the land as they know it. “Float and fill” solutions sets refers to the opportunity to relocate residential communities and aquatic agriculture activities on to technologically integrated floating islands that adapt to variable water levels, while also allowing for engineered sediment fill beneath the in situ platforms. For grassroots organizations and residents who want to fight for their community, deployment of, and adaptation to a suite of float and fill technology solutions will allow residents to remain where they are and thrive as part of a new paradigm of living in the Bayou. While this water-based mode of living certainly represents a significant change to existing lifestyles, many land-based Louisiana Estuary communities are already fully integrated with their aquatic surroundings through their livelihoods and lifestyles (e.g. sportfishing, hunting, seafood harvesting, and the water-based transportation systems that support these activities). In many cases, moving from raised ‘stilt’ dwellings to floating residential and industrial fishing complexes could mean a significant upgrade in terms of disaster resiliency and comfort.
The introduction of new ‘float and fill’ technologies at a regional scale offers opportunities for residents to actively play a critical role in the environmental, cultural, and economic restoration of the delta region. As more and more land-based communities begin to disappear beneath the rising gulf waters, a transition to a new generation of regenerative floating technology ecosystems offer them the opportunity to thrive in the shallow tidal zones that remain, while preserving the basic way of life for which the region and its people are known. As land-based communities complete their full transition to floating, possibilities will open for restoration of the regenerative flood and sediment deposit cycles that first formed the land, and then spawned and nurtured the rich mix of flora and fauna for which the region became known. Over time, some areas may even experience a reemergence of deposited land masses that allow for limited occupation and/or seasonal use. The adoption of this ‘float and fill’ strategy has the potential to not only safeguard the existence of countless small communities in the region, as well as the associated livelihoods of their inhabitants, but the successful design and deployment of these solution sets will offer hope to other delta communities around the world that are facing similar existential threats.
ECONOMIC POTENTIAL
Global Attention on and Investment in Southern Louisiana
Successful adoption of float and fill will generate international attention and investment, fundamentally transforming Southern Louisiana’s identity to the rest of the world and restructuring the makeup of regional economy. Managed properly, this transformation will not only preserve the core culture, traditions, values, and livelihoods of the local people, but it will also give them affordable access to the safest and most effective and reliable techniques and technologies for adapting to, and thriving in a world of rising seas. Like the ‘space race’ or the ‘age of discovery’ (or other great ‘moon shot’ mobilizations that have occurred throughout recorded history), realizing this vision will require a complex mix of interdependent technologies, component systems, and human resource mobilization. In the holistic service of a regenerative floating platform ecosystems, each of the finished component platforms would be composed of, and serviced by, an integrated and balanced mix of contributing technology systems that provides for basic service needs like fresh water, energy, food, and waste management. Similar in some ways to the design of a space station, the platforms will function as integrated biospheres that are open to the sky and floating on salt or brackish water. The incorporation of each of the critical component technologies will require a corresponding integration of the talent, expertise, and vision from the individuals and companies that are designing and deploying those solutions sets. This will result in a natural geographical concentration of capital, technology, and knowhow in the locations where the prototype platform networks are developed and deployed.
Conceptual diagrams of key features, major nutrient sources, and resulting symptoms related to eutrophication in the Gulf of Mexico (modified from Bricker et al. 2007); from Water Quality in the Gulf of Mexico
New Centers of Excellence
This concentration of resources and talent will result in an opportunity to reshape and diversify the economic potential for the local community in ways never imagined. Along with its identity as a center for excellence in food, music, field sports, and pristine natural beauty, the talent, knowhow, and technologies associated with the design, engineering, and construction of the floating platforms will inevitably become a source of pride for what it means to live in Louisiana’s bayou country. The influx of cutting edge allied regenerative technologies will spawn new centers of industrial excellence, attracting top talent from around the world while offering exciting new opportunities for entrepreneurs in the local community, as well as from across the state.
Currently, dangerous concentrations of pollutants and fertilizers that collect upriver in the vast Mississippi watershed are triggering ocean habitat eutrophication in the form of nutrient-rich ‘dead zones’. The Louisiana Gulf coast is already home to the second largest ‘dead zones’ in the world, which can cover up to 7,000 square miles. Floating agriculture and aquaculture complexes have already demonstrated the potential to grow a combination of algae, macroalgae, and shellfish while creating rich fish and crustacean habitat. These complexes, at scale, have the potential to restore regional water quality and generate sustainable economic activity while safely harvesting these otherwise dangerous nutrient concentrations.
While the technology for successfully harvesting these nutrient-rich dead zones already exists, and has been proven in the field, the details of financial viability and scaling strategies have not been resolved. However, a systems-based multi-disciplinary community engagement approach to deployment of these solutions has the potential to accelerate scaling while concurrently providing immediate local and regional economic benefits to prototype communities. Multiple benefits and revenue streams will be generated from a mix of aquatic agriculture for food additives, sustainable seafood harvesting, biofuel production, livestock feed, and carbon sequestration. In addition, there are the immeasurable secondary and tertiary benefits of preserving historical communities more or less in place while safeguarding the cultural heritage and regional character of what is commonly referred to as the “Gumbo Belt” or the Louisiana Estuary.
Opportunity Zone Benefits
With a viable implementation strategy, the people of Southern Louisiana will need to become comfortable with, and proficient in, the basic use of the technologies that control, monitor, and maintain the floating infrastructure on which they will come to live as a community-scale survival mechanism. Those who choose to engage more deeply in the research and development of these solutions sets, will have the chance to become partners and co-developers in the globally-relevant technologies being harnessed to save their own communities, as well as the derivative technologies that would be adapted and deployed in other parts of the world.
A well managed regional investment strategy would create a vast “Gulf Coast Opportunity Zone” that attracts the top regional and global talent needed to deploy the solutions developed, while offering education and training opportunities for locals and industry experts from around the world. Locally trained entrepreneurs would have the opportunity to share in the technology development processes as well as participate in the hands-on implementation of the integrated systems in the field; first in Louisiana and then in other at-risk regions of the world. Growing local expertise would both help provide the most affordable access to the technologies and techniques needed to preserve regional cultural heritage, while also providing the associated economic benefits that will come with pioneering the global development of the first successful delta-restoring floating communities.
Reading List and References
New Yorker Magazine Article: Louisiana Disappearing Coastline, by Elizabeth Kolbert
Wall Street Journal: The World’s Appetite Is Threatening the Mississippi River; Pollutants from booming farms combined with record wet weather are contaminating the nation's mightiest waterway.
BBC Future: Louisiana is Disappearing Under Water; Can Oysters Save It?
The general concepts embodied by 3D Ocean Farming have long been practised in China, where over 500 square kilometres of seaweed farms exist in the Yellow Sea. http://theconversation.com/how-farming-giant-seaweed-can-feed-fish-and-fix-the-climate-81761
The current market value of the global crop is between US$5 billion and US$5.6 billion, of which US$5 billion comes from sale for human consumption. Production, however, is expanding very rapidly.
How farming giant seaweed can feed fish and fix the climate
NASA Wants to Launch Floating Algae Farms - MIT Technology Review
Your new offshore energy source: Floating algae farms | Grist
US8161679B2 - Open ocean floating algae farm - Google Patents
Energy From Floating Algae Pods | Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute
Hard Lessons From the Great Algae Biofuel Bubble | Greentech Media
Why algae could be the best biofuel yet
Robotic Kelp Farms Promise an Ocean Full of Carbon-Neutral, Low-Cost Energy - IEEE Spectrum
Betting on Algal Biofuels - IEEE Spectrum
This Farmer Thinks Kelp Will Help Save the World | SAVEUR
Meet the Women Growing the California Seaweed Economy | Civil Eats
"More than 212,000 metric tons [235,000 tons] of food is lost to hypoxia in the Gulf of Mexico," says marine biologist Robert Diaz of The College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Va., who surveyed the dead zones along with marine ecologist Rutger Rosenberg of the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. "That's enough to feed 75 percent of the average brown shrimp harvest from the Louisiana gulf. If there was no hypoxia and there was that much more food, don't you think the shrimp and crabs would be happier? They would certainly be fatter." https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/oceanic-dead-zones-spread/
NOAA Sea level rise visualization tool: https://coast.noaa.gov/slr/#/layer/fld/2/-10586854.284057502/3276803.1573363403/7/satellite/51/0.8/2050/interHigh/midAccretion