Group Praises Bush

 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:                     CONTACT: Paul Harrison 202-607-0166-c,

August 29, 2006                                             pharrison@ed.org or Sean Crowley 202-550-6524-c,

scrowley@ed.org

Group Praises Bush’s Statement Calling for Congress to Fund

Wetland Restoration to Protect Louisiana, But Warns “Devil is in the Details”

Bills in Congress Would Not Require Any Money to be Used for Wetlands Restoration

New Orleans – Environmental Defense praised President Bush for, in effect, validating a report released yesterday by Environmental Defense, the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana, the National Wildlife Federation, the Gulf Restoration Network and the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation.

The report, “One Year After Katrina, Louisiana Still a Sitting Duck: A Report Card and Roadmap on Wetlands Restoration” (http://www.environmentaldefense.org/go/katrinaoneyear), warned that unless Louisiana’s chronic wetland losses are reversed, the communities of Louisiana cannot survive. During his visit in Louisiana today, President Bush said:

“One thing that the American people have got to understand is that in order to make sure the levee system works, there has to be a barrier system to protect the state of Louisiana. I strongly urge the United States Congress to pass energy legislation that will give the state of Louisiana more revenues from off-shore leases so they can restore the wetlands.”

(President Bush, White House transcript, www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/08/20060829-2.html)

“While we agree with President Bush, the devil is in the details,” said Paul Harrison, coastal Louisiana project manager and a senior policy analyst for Environmental Defense. “The fact is while the House- and Senate-passed bills expanding off-shore drilling off the Gulf Coast do not require that any money be used for wetlands restoration. The final bill could continue the current dangerous pattern in which we spend nearly 60 times more money on levees than on wetlands restoration - unless President Bush intervenes - and ensures the money is dedicated to wetlands restoration.”

Louisiana’s coastal wetlands are by far the largest and most important coastal ecosystem in North America, but over the past century about 2,000 of the original 7,000 square miles of coastal marsh and swamp forests that formed the coastal delta of the Mississippi River have disappeared, an area larger than Delaware (see map of land loss from 1932-2000 at www.lacoast.gov/maps/2004SElandloss/index.htm).

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Environmental Defense, a leading national nonprofit organization, represents more than 400,000 members.  Since 1967, Environmental Defense has linked science, economics, law and innovative private-sector partnerships to create breakthrough solutions to the most serious environmental problems. www.environmentaldefense.org