Louisiana cancels $3B repair coastal restoration funded by Deepwater Horizon oil spill settlement

NEW ORLEANS — Louisiana is officially halting a $3 billion coastal restoration funded by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill settlement money, state and federal agencies confirmed Thursday.

The Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion Project had been intended to rebuild upward of 20 square miles of land in southeast Louisiana to combat sea level rise and erosion on the Gulf Coast.

Conservation groups and other supporters of the project stressed it was an ambitious, science-based approach to mitigating the worst effects of climate change in a state where a football field of land is lost every 100 minutes. But Republican Gov. Jeff Landry has repeatedly said the project would undermine local oystermen and the fishing industry and fought against it since taking office last year.

The Louisiana Trustee Implementation Group, a coalition of federal agencies overseeing settlement funds from the 2010 Gulf oil spill, said that in a Thursday statement that the Mid-Barataria project is “no longer viable” for a range of reasons including ongoing litigation and the suspension of a federal permit after the state stopped working on the project.

A spokesperson for Louisiana’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority confirmed to The Associated Press that the state is canceling the project.