Building castles in the sand

What could be more American than trying to fight environmental disaster by creating a new one. According to Rob Young, professor of coastal ecology at Western Carolina University, that's exactly what we're doing.

One brilliant idea to avert further damage to wetland and coastal ecosystems is to build a 45-mile berm out of sand to protect the coast of Louisiana. The Army Corps of Engineers would move sand, presumably from another piece of coastline, to build a sand barrier 300-feet wide and standing six feet above the surface of the water.

In his blog post for Yale's "Environment 360," Young concludes that the ludicrous project is too expensive, too rushed and not likely to work. All of it driven by the blind need to do something, anything.

It's just this kind of near-sighted planning that got us here in the first place, however. Driven by annual reports and quarterly profits, the principles of both modern governance and corporate responsibility value immediate return over long-term success. Getting fast results is more important than getting it right.

Valued at half a billion dollars, building the berm comes with a big price tag for an uncertain outcome. But that's hardly a drop in the bucket for the likes of BP that recently committed at least $20 billion to the cleanup effort. More alarming is the fact that we would risk doing even more environmental damage to sensitive marine habitats by dredging up the ocean floor in an attempt to keep oil off the shore. This without any guarantees that the berm will actually keep oil out of sensitive areas; there is evidence to suggest it might only trap it there.

Young also points out that with expedited approval, the project did not receive proper review and few experts in the field of coastal ecology were consulted. Even EPA was given less than a day to file comments on the project.

This kind of quick action is exactly what we don't need, writes Young. Instead, this disaster should awaken us to the need to re-imagine environmental planning as the most important step of a project, one that should be considered carefully with input from as many stakeholders as possible. Not rushed out the door at the 11th hour.