La. wants environ project fast tracks

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards has petitioned President Trump’s administration to add five of Louisiana's major Gulf coastal master plan restoration projects – Mid-Barataria, Mid-Breton, Houma Navigation Canal Lock complex, Calcasisu salinity control measures, and river reintroduction to Maurepas Swamp - to a fast-track federal program that requires environmental review and permitting. Each is marked as a fast-track project in the state Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority's proposed 2017 master plan update. Together, their design and construction costs are estimated at about $3 billion. On Jan. 24, Trump signed an executive order "expediting environmental reviews and approvals for high priority infrastructure projects." The five projects already have been subjected to scientific review, Edwards said, both through the state's own coastal master plan process and through the vetting required of projects receiving BP spill money from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, the federal-state Gulf Coast Ecosystem Restoration Council and the Oil Pollution Act's Natural Resource Damage Assessment Trustee Implementation Group. (Source: Times-Picayune 03/08/17)