4 universities team up on coastal issues
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In an effort to give the state an easier way to access university research, training and information, four Louisiana universities are forming a consortium to address coastal restoration and protection issues.
The four primary universities involved so far are LSU, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, University of New Orleans and Tulane University.
“We’ve been working on this for about a year,” said Robert Twilley, a professor with the LSU department of oceanography and coastal sciences.
Staff from the four universities started working closely while the Louisiana Coastal Area report was being developed and going through the federal review and approval process, he said.
Then, during the post-Hurricane Katrina era, staff members from the same four universities found themselves again playing a major support role with technical information, he said.
“We felt now, in the implementation of the (coastal restoration and protection) plan we thought we should formalize our relationship,” Twilley said.
This kind of consortium will make it easier for the state and the Office of Coastal Protection and Restoration’s Louisiana Applied Coastal Engineering and Science Program to contact university scientists without having to call each group individually, he said.
“Having said that, it’s not exclusive to these four universities,” Twilley said. “It’s not the only way the universities will interact with the state.”
The consortium also doesn’t preclude university or other staff from working with, or to question, the state and federal work in coastal restoration and protection, he said.
Bob Stewart, ULL professor, said this Coastal Sustainability Consortium will have an executive committee made up of representatives of each university, from the state and the Army Corps of Engineers.
The focus will be to bring in professors from all kinds of different areas from coastal science to engineering to legal with a goal to enhance technical assistance to coastal restoration efforts, Stewart said.
“What we all want out of this is the best project we can get,” Stewart said.
It’s also a way that universities can play to another one of their strong areas, which is to provide education and training for people involved in coastal restoration and protection, Stewart said.
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