Mr.

Jared Genova
100 Resilient Cities Fellow
City of New Orleans
June 6, 2016
Mr. Genova,
I am writing you today to discuss the speech given by the mayor last Friday at the State of the Coast
Conference. The mayor hit on some very important points that the people of Louisiana must earn the
American taxpayers trust everyday on coastal restoration spending, that we have to put aside the
ongoing fight between the oil and gas industry and environmental groups to find a uniquely Louisiana
solution for achieving resiliency, and that we have to learn to live with water and I would add to live
with the natural changes in the coastal wetlands that surround us. The mayor also called for a new
covenant between the industry and the people of Louisiana. I would like to share with you the details
of an initiative of the New Orleans Geological Society (NOGS) that we believe can have a profound
impact on addressing all of these issues while working toward long term resiliency. NOGS was formed in
1941 and has been active in promoting earth sciences in the city throughout that time including
publishing many geologic studies of the area, and most recently through a strong working relationship
with the Childrens Museum of Louisiana. Our initiative is focused on bringing the knowledge base and
data of the oil and gas industry to graduate-level university programs to be used for coastal resiliency
research.
The oil and gas industry is one of, if not the, largest employers of earth scientists in the state. The
collective knowledge base produced by 100 years of exploration of the subsurface has made coastal
Louisiana one of the most well-understood and well-documented geologic provinces in the world. Many
of the basic principles of basin tectonics, subsidence, compaction, fault slippage and salt movement that
are applied in deltaic basins around the world were worked out here by geologists in the oil and gas
industry. So too were many of the basic principles of deltaic processes at the surface. The natural cycle
of the delta and the 7,000-year period in which the wetlands were built that the mayor referred to in his
speech were worked out with significant contribution from Exxons research lab in Houston. The
enterprise of oil and gas exploration and development has resulted in a nearly uniform coverage of
coastal Louisiana with 3-D seismic surveys that allow us to image below the surface, and the computer
processing techniques used by the industry to enhance the resolution of those images are state of the
art. And yet almost none of this capability is being employed to address the challenges of long term
sustainability in coastal Louisiana.
At the same time the enterprise of coastal restoration has been conceived, designed and implemented
with almost no contribution from or consideration of the geologic processes going on just below the
surface. Dr. Len Bahr held the position equivalent to the Director of CPRA today throughout the
planning and development stages of the coastal restoration program. He recently said of that period
the planning expertise has been dominated by those who deal primarily with surface processes on the
visible veneer of the delta, not the riverine hydrodynamics and sedimentary processes that created the
delta and the underlying tectonic processes and shallow and deep subsidence to which the delta
ultimately responds. Truer words have never been spoken, and impacts of ignoring geology for

decades is now being felt. The presentation by Brad Inman and Mark Wingate of US Army Corps at the
State of the Coast Conference discussed the status of the 25th year of the CWPPRA program. 101
projects have been constructed and another 22 are in planning phases. $1.537 billion has been spent on
project construction. The foundational premise of mayors speech was like that of so many other
political speeches that we have failed to achieve coastal sustainability in 25 years because we have not
spent enough money. Consider the reviews of some the 101 projects constructed in that time that were
given at the conference.
There was a strikingly clear pattern. Reviews of every type of restoration project: sediment diversions,
beach restorations and marsh creation projects included look-back assessments that recognized that the
projects had not met their intended objectives because the rate of subsidence had been
underestimated. This is the type of subsidence that is one of the most basic geologic processes in a
deltaic province, and nobody has suggested that it has anything to do with oil and gas extraction. The
ability of map and measure the geologic factors primarily controlling patterns of subsidence:
compaction, fault slippage and salt movement are essential components of the oil and gas industry
knowledge base. No meaningful attempt has ever been made to map or measure any of these factors in
the planning of a major restoration project. Dr. Alex Kolker of Tulane and LUMCON concluded his
presentation on the West Bay Sediment Diversion (which in 14 years of operation has created about 5%
of the land it was intended to create in 20 years) with the recommendation Future diversions will be
most successful if they can yield West Bay - style sediment accumulation rates in systems with
substantially slower subsidence rates. And yet no efforts have been made to assess the geological
framework that controls subsidence or to make site-specific measurements of subsidence rates at any of
the proposed future diversion locations.
I suggest that the challenges we face in coastal Louisiana are due primarily to the fact that two of its
most important players the oil and gas industry and the coastal restoration community have not
been talking to each other for the past few decades. If we are to achieve the goal of resiliency in the
coastal zone we must do it through a cooperative effort among all stakeholders in the coastal zone
including the oil and gas industry and the coastal restoration community. The oil and gas infrastructure
in the Louisiana wetlands including Port Fourchon is of such vital importance to the well-being of the
national economy that its sustainability is an issue of national security. The industry has an obvious
vested interest in employing its knowledge base and data set to insure long term sustainability in the
coastal zone. At the same time the people of Louisiana must earn the trust of the American taxpayers
to use the mayors words by insuring that dollars that are spent are invested in to projects that have the
greatest likelihood of success. Both of these objectives can be met through the NOGS research
initiative.

The NOGS Proposal

This is a link to the proposal document. Since it was released last year, we have initiated five graduatelevel research projects that are utilizing oil and gas industry seismic data. These projects are ongoing at
U.N.O., Tulane, L.S.U. and U.L.-Lafayette. Mr. Pierre Conner, the Board Chair of the Coalition to Restore

Coastal Louisiana, has expressed an interest to me to visit the U.N.O. campus to review the two research
projects that are currently underway. If someone from your office would like to attend, I would be
happy to work to facilitate the arrangements.

Please dont hesitate to contact me at any time to discuss this further,

Chris McLindon
New Orleans Geological Society
504-756-2003