Mid-Barataria processes delayed

The jewel of Louisiana’s coastal restoration project – the $1.4B Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion – and its environmental and permitting process won’t be completed until around April 2022, the Army Corps of Engineers and Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority confirmed to NOLA.com. It amounts to a delay of nine months. The schedule change for the cornerstone restoration project was caused by the difficulty of determining what changes to the environment the diversion is likely to cause, and not staffing issues caused by the coronavirus pandemic, officials said. "It really boils down to the magnitude of the data," said CPRA Executive Director Bren Haase. "There's not any one delay (issue) … It's all taking longer than originally scheduled." Haase could not rule out future delays, and he did point to the pandemic for that possibility. (Source: NOLA.com 04/05/20) https://www.nola.com/news/environment/article_cf13c52a-744a-11ea-aca0-93db39522307.html