BATON ROUGE, La.—After Hurricane Ida slammed into the Louisiana coast in August 2021, it took more than 100 lives and cost billions of dollars in damage. To some here, the storm was just one more justification for a desperate measure to preserve the coast by intentionally flooding parts of the state.

“I don’t mean to be alarmist about it, but anybody who’s spent any time along our coast, whether you’re fishing, hunting or working, you’ve seen the changes to our coast. We know it’s going away,” says Bren Haase, executive director of the state’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority (CPRA). “I don’t think we can be successful without using the tools and the resources in the Mississippi River to help restore our coast.”

Read the full article in Scientific American.

Duy Linh Tu is a journalist and documentary filmmaker focusing on education, science and social justice. His work has appeared in print and online, on television and in theaters. He is also author of Feature and Narrative Storytelling for Multimedia Journalists (Focal Press). And he teaches reporting and video storytelling courses at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

Co-published with Scientific American.