Hello and welcome again to rewind im Elizabeth Prada back in 2006 when we 1st launched aljazeera english our goal was to find stories that are the channel simply werent covering here on rewind we revisit some of the best of them to find out how the story has moved on in the years since today we rewind into 2009 into the wetlands of the mississippi delta on the gulf of mexico in 2005 the u. S. State of louisiana was devastated by Hurricane Katrina a category 5 storm which breached levees and flood the city of new orleans and in july 2019 Tropical Storm barry again forced thousands to evacuate as heavy rainfall brought widespread flooding. But hearkens arent the only problem louisianas facing its been losing land to the gulf of mexico at an alarming rate caused in part by all the exploration im a spy rising sea levels from Climate Change all of which has threaten the unique and ancient way of life on the by use as those communities now face the prospect of having to relive kate to Higher Ground as their land and homes a lost to the rising waters from 2009 here is losing louisiana. What was once a Thriving Community. Only water with lettering above downtown louisville right on the southern tip of louisiana it lies submerged 30 feet below us and what happened here could be what license store for the whole of this region as line continues to be claimed by the sea. This is by a 3 ship part of the delta system of the Mighty Mississippi one of the great rivers of the world and an american icon. For the fight along highway one towards the gulf of mexico and youll find whats left of leavell above water level. Here to the remnants of the french speaking cajun communities the 1st arrived here in the 18th century evicted by the british from canada. Has cajuns take on these fost wetlands finding freedom and independence in this much hugely top terrain the marshes became and remain home to their descendants today. In one line 70 interation online 5 generations in the course of a recent windle curio is the general manager of the south of the food levee district the 1st generation the learning for french his familys journey through the generations reflects the cajun experience in southern louisiana a fragile existence in a delicate environment these waters are the lifeblood were here because of the water were here because the water it feeds us about it is also the nemesis the generations of people in louisiana have been retreating and were going to keep on retraining until we have to the point of stability. The problem today is that nobody really knows where that vanishing point lies. Its only with the goods i feel that you get a real sense of the scale of the loss. Ration. And glad. You got a pretty sound. At one time these waters were completely planted in green and natural defense against storm surges through the it is the channels with the commercial navigation and Oil Pipelines with thats more and more salt water began flowing into the wetlands poisoning the entire ecosystem of the natural marshlands. Results. Well for decades the land has been sinking recently the rate has fluctuated between 30 to 50 square kilometers a year today that totals almost 7000 square kilometers an area larger than some us states has disappeared. And now experts are predicting that as Global Warming brings stronger and more violent hearkens and rising sea levels the rate of land loss will only accelerate. In the past the mississippi used to deposit millions of tons of sediment into the vaults but. That no longer levees built to protect against cyclical flooding instead channel all the sediment out to sea stopping the muslims the. Way this place. For the Mississippi River the water the settlements. And no we dont we didnt allow that flooding anymore so yeah this expanse of delta that basically its north was cut off much like a heart attack when i went vessel gets clogged and you cant get the new entrants into different parts of the heart muscle. Windell takes us to a small title gauge on the eastern end of highway one the system measures the speed at which the waters of the gulf of mexico consume the surrounding land. The monthly increases are microscopic narrow than a single strand of hair but climate scientists believe they indicate something dire the more we wait the more places itll be too late the fact that a lot is 10 years is going to be too late for a lot of areas is not only moves in the future through the past it could be that right here one of the 1st major stories in the age of Global Warming is being written. The obituary for Southeast Louisiana once flourishing open cypress trees like these quickly die as salt water intrudes those trees drowned seen as natures tombstones. In louisville and in other towns along the bayou even the dead on spanned. A poignant reminder of a community that has disappeared and. For those who remain the rapid change and sense of loss runs deep down that shes all right you have the farmland that raise judgment day that russian blood donation. Big plantation all those are gone but. Captain bobby brown has been running the legal dock for 4 decades in front of him now is only water the people who lived here distant memories but trapped that they wanted to live in. By sweat and it called auster. That this mission push water. Now salt water. Is a shame. Its a shame to lose. One job at a table that i want to raise you know their heads you know as a fresh water turns to salt water ecological changes swiftly followed. And with that a profound impact on the lives and livelihoods of the cajuns especially for those in the shrimping of. Us who are over the food base of every species between here and the gulf it all starts in the marshes so once we lose our marshes the food they see roads and Everything Else just this goes. To louisiana shrimp need the fresh water marshes to mature before heading out into the gulf now theyre running out of room as a consequence the fishing season is increasingly shortened. Coupled with an influx of cheap foreign bred shrimp saturates in the u. S. Markets local fishermen have no way to turn thats one thing about the numbers now they their resilience bunch and they work hard and they just have to work harder for less money but like i say its just been tough. Suffered the economics you know are getting worse but you know it seems like every year for these guys heads its a struggle. Add to that more than 300000000. 00 in damage caused to the local industry by the last 2 hurricanes alone and these fishing being towns of years gone by have all but gone down. For their. Food at 2 pm every day of what they call the cajun dollar along side highway one a group of old friends gather. There are some right by god yeah they still speak the pats were offering their ancestors. But goal of the day for the last is of the value instead they collect cans for few extra dollars so if it wasnt changed a lot in his life to. Them all of them on the tile way off. Wealthy i broke it. Going to pot. Cmon how im here to know. Shes not going to get a small link to say that its sad. Its really sad shes still the land been well you know or gone away society and dont know how much were still people. These old timers a pretty much all thats left of the cage an existence on fire. It was all in progress i just call it a way ill have. To live. At. 80. This is an island road the only connection between the mainland and killed is josh on. The island is in fact the small ridge of land now below sea level its surrounded by levees that have failed to protect the area as hearkens grow stronger and the protective marshes disappear. I can tell you about on them have a king on his bed. Or a drill coming through and the train reading this. I think is coming ma hard drive about 300 feet away and for andrew. In the middle of the room right now. Here the biloxi chichi mucha and native american tribes have lived for centuries but the chief is reluctantly conceding that the moment has come to make a change were now in the last 7 years the last 7 percent of our people there so i mean so we dont know how much longer this is going to be here there is one levy plan to salvage some of the communities along the Southern Coast but it may come at the expense of others like chief not queens people we want to move as a community because of our heritage the history we have here on niland and to try to keep the culture get also. He has also a government for aid to relocate but some on the island are resisting his plan i dont want to. Cast me something. Its a life or death. But the majority say they are ready to face facts after years of rebuilding and recovering from the old nature you cant plan anything here you cant grow any animals here the parents have to bring their children to school if we want groceries in the waters on the road without either do without or tried to watch the water go down and then and then come back whats left is mostly memories among the ruins and all of this was beautiful they had trees and they had the land out there where you could walk and its going to feel good again to be safe. It took the Mississippi River 7000 years to build the coast of louisiana it took less than a century to wash away a 3rd of it to understand how we dont at this point have to go back 80 years to the time of huey p. Long he was a visionary state governor he helped create much of what we see today the streets the levees built to protect the city the bridges and the canals all help the state of louisiana it hold it out of poverty but there was a floor in the plan without the sediment brought down by the Mississippi River the line started to subside. In the night he sees long he had consolidated enormous political power again unprecedented public works. Aimed at lifting residents out of poverty and bringing more industry to the state. That when you roads bridges there were dogs for ships and with all of this along came the only industry. Rigs began sprouting up along the bayous and canals with dredged across the fields to facilitate drilling volume supply but. We unleashed forces that we did not quite understand and its. Very bad outcomes. Roy is a professor at Louisiana State university if you years ago he started using g. P. S. Technology to study how the surface shifts because Research Revealed that data that everybody had been relying on for decades had been exaggerated or are here we can actually see today 12 satellites the reality is that the land is actually lower than records show which means the threat is far greater than people think initially there was a number of people who deny that they didnt want to hear in fact they actively worked against even the publication of this work but over time. The reality you see here because now people are beginning to see this effect where they go. Because not only the wetlands that are in trouble were on the east side of new orleans in a place called lake forest it is a quiet enough community but its what lies beneath thats a problem. In this neighborhood just on the edge of new orleans you can see subsidence in action foundations opened up by the Sinking Ground and you cant park your car your garage because the driveways and more than a foot below the entrance. The problem is nobody can agree on a solution Coastal Restoration efforts have been underway for 2 decades but for every square kilometer of land that the government has either saved or created 5 square kilometers have been lost to the gulf these internal bombs become bigger and bigger and bigger and they carry some pay more so as a marine biologist and director of the terry Bone National estrie program we couldnt build a land where there was a land before but we can build land where there was land before we can build a ridge where there was land before. Because you have the the foundation to support that land sampai and others reject the idea that more levees will save the the land all towns. Instead he and others support the 2 pronged plan to pump in massive amounts of new settlement and allow the Mississippi River to restore the rest of the river is the key its the only way to get the the most efficient way of holding on to whats still left and it will take a lot of money. Theres no question that always and i cannot afford this alone. Theres no question that you know that this is not a louisiana problem alone this is a National Problem and will require a National Commitment without making the neglect that weve been forgotten we basically ignored by the federal government. Meanwhile virtually all the practices that exacerbated land loss were allowed to continue and in some cases even encouraged. I dont want to be critical of my federal government but they really did do a whole bunch here constraints it is a hobby a policeman he took us to a place where many believe the only hope to save southern louisiana lines. Pool if you show is a cluster of sport fishing camps in a gated community surrounded by huge dogs it is a city of ships in the marshes with supply vessels for the 500. 00 or more oil rigs out in the gulf of mexico. A 3rd of americas oil and natural gas come through here accounting for hoffa the nations refinery output about despite all of this industrial capacity just a small slice makes it into the coffers of the state. Out of the 7000000000. 00 in revenue louisiana receives less than one percent. And people just dont understand the importance and the benefits that sounds louisiana provides for as a country but the price of his few buy for the seafood his ability to get his grain to market is all the panda. Point south louisiana function probably and that understanding is that. There is a congressional plan to reroute funds to states like louisiana but not until 2017 many observers say that will simply be too late. When i was a little boy my grandfather used to say this was the bank if you needed money you went to the bank caught it sold it and got your money but its not like that any more. Government regulation salt water intrusion habitat destruction you know and these guys here theyre all dying theyre getting old and theres no one morning to think theyre my generation or the next generation may very well be the last it is. This is place a Tipping Point in the balance between man and his intent. And his this river delta fated to be a clarion call for help humans and nature must strike a better balance so that base can survive. They rob the bank they rob the bank thats a good way of putting it yeah they were on the bank. Losing louisiana from 2009 but some dire warnings about what the next decade would bring said 10 years on we often that clock now as the u. S. Environment correspondent to return to the reason anna to find out of the anticipated death of the delta became reality or whether to quote mark twain those reports turned out to be grossly exaggerated. Im on my way back to buy the force in southern that we. To catch up with windell curial his job is to maintain the levee the surround to protect the syria from the elements. There is a window how great a ladder you have not changed a bit. When we were last here how much have we lost since then or is as in the last 10 years were losing about how we use the road back in the 70s we were losing about 70 square miles a year down to maybe 15 square miles ok its still substantial but its less so it was 70 years now 15 when i was a kid i mean you would see open water from the room it was just solid more the saw the canal a side road that the used to build the road but it was solid marsh you look at it right now from one i was a celtic 1051 where you would have 85 percent was land and more now 90 percent is open water. To live in relative security in this part of the world you need a huge amount of student debt and im working on a harken levee which all the way around in circles 3 communities 26000 people right here is the town of gold medal gold medal several feet below sea level and the sea. Is just here on this side of the levee that is the front edge of the gulf of mexico and without this hurricane levy gold medal the other communities would not exist. But some pots a be left to the elements this is the once Thriving Community of leaving which unlike Golden Meadow has no levee to protect it from rising sea levels or even minor storms the corps with a levels to rise. Its a lot of these kids. You know we had it was a lot more like. A match in this land all this land being fortified he hadas today thats what people. Yeah there was as you say there was a cemetery right that was in the right and took a boat out to it and you could clearly see the tombstone stick you know it was or not its just its just flat right. So the community here in louisville 10 years ago it was about whats a 30 yeah and i think it just its been a continuous you know from the 1915 for you its been losing population and then 10 years ago my dad that you know but now were down to 60. You see this area though that we looked at gold into gold medal would look just like this just like this if you didnt have a living. I meant for this man insult his family a fish these waters for generations but you know faces the very real prospect of losing everything here at c. N. N. Here again the for this is how it right yes let me show you around so you while we have. This is our boat. One of the last remaining leavell residents the death of the mississippi delta is very much a reality. So tell me what its like with. Me and when you hear a storm is brewing you just you just start praying you have to you have to packing go you know they make you leave and then you dont know if you coming back to in their areas do things in their preserving their proud land and here is its not theres no future in them or future for residue. If it hurts it hurts to know that. You have to move and i know well have to move on no well have to leave here. There was nothing in the water youll have water. If shes right and in 10 more years time there will be no record and maybe for this whole area will be underwater and in the gulf of mexico. Well thats it from us join us again next week and do check out the rewind page at aljazeera dot com for more films from the series but for now thank you for joining us and well see you again sir. Remind. Me of the. Hard. Core thing india 10000000 children what in one bit of the victims of trafficking and one of the large number 2 very very big on aljazeera. 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