Each year the Army Corps of Engineers receives hundreds of applications to build on Louisiana’s coastal wetlands – at the same time state officials continue to plead with Washington for more assistance to prevent coastal erosion, and the issues are creating a difference of opinion on several levels.    

Within the last 60 years, Louisiana has lost enough wetlands to fill the entire state of Maryland. Today, the coast still loses a football field of land every 45 minutes.

Meanwhile, the Corps continues to allow developers to build on wetlands – but members say a permit must come first.

Pete Serio, the chief of the regulatory branch for the Corps, says they receive about 1,500 applications a year for wetland projects in the southern region of the state, which includes sites that are often close to the coast.

"We have a mixture of permit applications anywhere from the mom and pop type on the bayou to the big developers," he says.

In more than 90 percent of those cases, a permit is issued. But first the project must go through a habitat evaluation process – that is when the Corps tells the builder how much wetland has to be replaced, otherwise known as mitigation.

"Normally it runs anywhere from one and a half to a two to one ratio," Serio says.

The builder must also restore wetlands near the area of the development, Serio says, and Corps studies show it takes anywhere from 30 to 50 years for new wetlands to become a full grown habitat.

King Milling is the chairman of the governor’s advisory commission on coastal protection and restoration – he says the state is lobbying for billions of dollars to restore the coast and feels the Corps may face stricter guidelines in the future.         

'It's very important if we are prepared and if the federal government is prepared to spend this type of money,” Milling says, “that we do everything we can to achieve to some degree some consistency between what we're doing and what is being done along the coastline."

Serio says, “It does concern us but of course in our process we're going to make a determination whether this project is contrary to public interest or not and if it is contrary to public interest than we're going to deny the permit."

Members of the Corps say before issuing a permit, they urge builders to first move their site so it doesn’t encompass wetlands.

The federal agency also asks the applicant to lessen the amount of wetlands they plan to build on.