Water, water everywhere, and too much to drink

Joining Fitzpatrick on the May 21 Zoom call were Tara Poling, program coordinator of the Marianist Environmental Education Center; Robert Taylor, director of  Concerned Citizens of St. John; Matt Rousso, director of the Gulf South affiliate chapter of Maryknoll Missionaries; Chris Cook, director of the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation’s New Canal Lighthouse Museum; Rob Gorman, founder of the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana; and Barbara Johnson, founder of The Great Delta Tours.
    

Fitzpatrick invited panelists to summarize their organization’s mission in relationship to the local environment and their successes in improving it.
    

“We have to be concerned with our environment if we want to continue to live here,” said Gorman, who lives on Bayou Lafourche.
    

As the operator of an eco-tourism company, Johnson said the state has a “rich and fragile environment,” with coastal erosion causing the disappearance of a football field of land every 15 minutes. 
    

She wants Louisiana to be known not only for food and music but also for its beauty as a “global destination” for wetlands rich in life.
    

Through the Lake Pont­chartrain Basin Foundation, founded in 1989 to address pollution, Cook said his science-driven organization works with governmental and nonprofit partners to clean waterways and find solutions to other coastal problems. In 2013, the foundation opened New Canal Lighthouse’s education center and museum.
 

What Laudato si’ means
    

Rousso stressed the need to heed Pope Francis’ encyclical because an encyclical is the second-highest authoritative teaching for Catholics. He said the document is action-oriented: In continuity with previous popes, Pope Francis writes that ecological conversion is necessary and humans need to change their lifestyle.
    

Pope Francis quoted St. John Paul II in saying God is disappointed in the human race for misinterpreting the Book of Genesis. 
    

“We are not dominators of the universe and other creations; we have to see ourselves as stewards,” Rousso said.
    

Pope Francis emphasizes the sacredness of all creation and how to find God in nature and the environment, with a special emphasis on hearing “the cry of the poor.”
    

In Laudato si’, Gorman said Pope Francis calls for the current environmental crisis to be addressed as a social justice and a stewardship issue. It is a social justice issue because the poorest and most vulnerable live in areas most at risk for pollution, drought, flooding and environmentally caused diseases.   
    

“We can’t balance the burden of environmental solutions on the backs of our most vulnerable,” he said.
    

Gorman said as environmental stewards, humans  are called to pray and live in a way that reduces their impact on the earth. He sees coastal restoration as a moral imperative and encouraged church members to get involved. 
    

“The reality of climate change is overtaking a lot of people’s unwillingness to accept that it is fact,” Gorman said. Erosion, subsidence and sea-level rise due to climate change are making places uninhabitable, he added.
    

Pope Francis said, “a true ecological approach always becomes a social approach in which we hear both the cry of the poor and the cry of the earth.”
    

Fitzpatrick reiterated the social justice aspect of pollution by stating residents living near the (Dupont) Denka plant have high incidences of cancer. He also mentioned that the name for the area between Baton Rouge and New Orleans – Death Alley – is due to the presence of approximately 200 petrochemical plants along the Mississippi River. 
 

How can we help
    

Poling discussed how the Marianist Environmental Education Center, established in 1992, restored the prairies, wetlands and native plants on a 147-acre Mount St. John property that the Marianists bought in 1910 in southwest Ohio. 
    

Through its nurseries, plant sales and educational workshops, the center gives participants “opportunities to encounter creation not just as a source of inspiration and beauty but as a real mediator of the divine and as a teacher. It’s the type of encounter that gets to the heart of Francis’ message of integral ecology (in Laudato si’).”
    

The center also works with faith communities to initiate ecological restoration on their sites. As a direct result of Laudato si’, Poling said the brothers finalized a conservation easement to protect 62 acres in 2019, and said other religious orders could do the same.
    

“It’s a huge opportunity given the amount of land the church owns,” she said. 
    

Fitzpatrick asked Johnson how Louisiana residents could better live with water. She said Hurricane Katrina caused the state and nation to fundamentally change how humans sustain themselves and analyze how water works in our wetland environment.
    

Engineers built higher levees, flood walls and flood gates to hold water back – thinking it was bad – but now the state needs an action plan to restore its coast, she said. 
    

“The flood walls are not enough” to protect us from storms, hurricanes and storm surges,” Johnson said. “We need to restore our wetlands that act as giant speed bumps” and create multiple lines of defense. 
    

The unintended consequences of pumping water out of New Orleans is that it contributes to subsidence and damages underground infrastructure. 
    

Innovative ideas to store water as it falls, percolate it and create more permeable surfaces and green space are on the horizon. She pointed to the City Park area as a centerpiece, with lagoons now connected to a cleaned-up Bayou St. John. 
    

Individuals and neighborhoods can make a difference by planting trees to reduce air pollution, raise the water table and create safety against storms. Volunteering with the Commission to Restore Coastal Louisiana and Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation is another way.
    

To learn why New Orleans’ levee system was created, Fitzpatrick encouraged reading John Barry’s book, “Rising Tide.” It explains, Cook said, how the levees solved flooding, but the plan was  short-sighted in not considering the environmental and ecological impact that now upsets the whole eco-system.

The Bonnet Carre Spillway had to then be built as an emergency release for river water; levees decreased the river sentiment that had built Louisiana, leading to shrinkage. Another manmade problem came after Lake Pontchartrain’s restoration: Clamshells were mined to pave the southshore, but scientists discovered that this unknowingly interrupted the lake’s natural cleaner. 
    

Gorman urges everyone to visit Catholic Climate Covenant’s website and take the St. Francis Pledge. 
    

Johnson said projects to improve the environment and restore it have other positive impacts such as job creation and an increase in tourism and tax dollars to the state economy.
    

“Our goal as a state is to become leaders in environmental management,” she said.
    

Christine Bordelon can be reached at [email protected].