Island restoration's web of pipelines

An $11.2M East Timbalier Island, La., coastal restoration project is going to get another $2.2M to deal with an unexpected tangled web of oil and gas (O&G) pipelines. The state project plans to rebuild the island, which is part of a chain of barrier islands protecting marshlands in Terrebonne and Lafourche parishes, but it ran into a vast network of badly mapped active and abandoned oil wells and pipelines. The shallow island, located 35 miles southeast of Houma, has been eroding at a rate of some 70 feet per year over the last few decades. Its loss would expose fragile wetlands and hundreds of oil wells in Terrebonne and Timbalier bays to storm surges. The state’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority (CPRA) is planning to spend some $160M to rebuild and re-create some 460 acres of marsh and dune. The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based environmental non-profit, has contributed $5.6M to jump-start the project. The non-profit has agreed a CPRA request for $2.2M more to cover the engineering and design work-around of those poorly mapped O&G infrastructures. (Source: NOLA.com 11/24/17)