BATON ROUGE, La. (Jan. 11, 2023) – The Water Institute joins our partners in congratulating Louisiana’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority on the completion of the 2023 Draft Coastal Master Plan. The release of this plan on Jan. 6 for public review and comment marks the culmination of years of science-based research, design and analysis around coastal planning, restoration and risk reduction.
“Addressing Louisiana’s land loss crisis and protecting coastal communities requires the comprehensive and integrated approach that projects identified in the master plan offer,” CPRA Chairman Chip Kline said in a release Friday. “No other state in the country has a plan like ours utilizing the best available science and engineering to preserve our coast and culture for generations to come.”
The Water Institute was honored to help create this fourth edition of Louisiana’s Coastal Master plan, building off our work in support of the prior two plans in 2012 and 2017.
“The 2023 Draft Coastal Master Plan builds on the capabilities and advancements of previous editions to prioritize projects for implementation,” said The Water Institute’s Senior Vice President Hugh Roberts. “The Water Institute is proud to have supported CPRA through improvements in predictive models, inclusion of new information into the risk modeling, development of new risk metrics, and identification and engagement of additional key partners like the team at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center who led development of the online data viewer and provided computational resources for predictive modeling at no cost to the state.”
“The Water Institute led the assessment of flood risk, including storm surge and wave modeling, flood depth and damage estimation, and high tide flood analysis, as well as being a key contributor to the assessment of land and ecosystem change with the modeling effort,” said The Water Institute’s Director of Planning and Policy Research Jordan Fischbach. “Each Coastal Master Plan includes improvements over the previous plan, and the draft 2023 Coastal Master Plan is the most advanced, science-based plan yet to emerge from this extensive development process.”
"Developing the master plan would not be possible without the number of groups working hand in hand with CPRA, including partners from academia, the private sector and applied research groups like The Water Institute,” said Stuart Brown, assistant administrator at Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority. “The diverse mix of skill sets and dedicated partners working towards this plan for the past few years, combined with insights from our communities across the coast, has led to the most comprehensive plan to date."
Read the2023 Draft Coastal Master Plan here.
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