Dramatic visuals from opposite sides of the world illustrate what a difference a well-funded commitment can make to a region’s future.

Computer projections of Louisiana’s coastline show erosion eating more than 2,500 square miles of coast from 1839 to 2020. Meanwhile, work continues on what some call a new wonder of the world, one of the three palm-shaped resort islands being built in the sea off of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.

What does that project, started in the last six years, say about Louisiana's challenge to restore this vanishing coastline?

“What it says is that in the space of about three years we could totally rebuild all our barrier islands back to where they were 100 years ago,” said Ivor van Heerden, Deputy Director of the LSU Hurricane Center.

Van Heerden said rebuilding Louisiana's barrier islands is critical to our hurricane protection.

“Number one, they trip up the waves; they reduce the wave action so the waves impacting the wetlands or homes or levees are much lower,” van Heerden said. “And secondly, they slow down the surge.”

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In view of the Army Corps of Engineers' effort to rebuild levees and flood protection in metro New Orleans, you might imagine that crews are working furiously to restore and improve what's essentially the front door of our storm protection Louisiana's coastline. But guess what?

“We are not even close to winning this battle,” said Kerry St. Pe, Executive Director for the Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary Program. “We are not even sustaining. We're losing constantly. Our communities are becoming more vulnerable.”

St. Pe said in 2005 alone, hurricanes Katrina and Rita robbed Louisiana of 217 square miles of coastline. Right now, the state loses 20 to 25 square miles a year.

And how much of Louisiana's coastline was restored in the more than two years since Katrina? Maybe a square mile of land, according to Dr. Shea Penland, the Director and Professor of the Pontchartrain Institute of Environmental Sciences.

Investigations of the levee failures during Katrina blamed piecemeal, hodgepodge construction that stretched over decades, as well as faulty engineering and construction. And yet, two hurricane seasons after the lessons Katrina taught, some are concerned that coastal restoration is still taking place in a piecemeal fashion.

Darren Lee, Louisiana Department of Natural Resources, said there’s no dredging project underway to build barrier islands, but added work could get underway on the next project in the coming year.

Patricia Taylor, a spokesperson for the Environmental Protection Agency, shot video of some of the dredging done to a barrier island four miles off of Cocodrie—the New Cut Restoration Project—which filled a huge breach between what had become two islands.

“It happened in ‘74 with, I believe (Hurricane) Carmen, and continued to expand,” Lee said.

“And what we were afraid of was that water during high storm events would focus thru here and continue to erode this cut.”

New Cut was a breach between East and Trinity islands, much of it low-lying. This project has filled in the breach with sediment from a site four miles away and raised it to seven feet above sea level, just like East and Trinity islands.

“Total project cost was about $13 million,” Taylor said.

But why aren't the state and federal governments building barrier islands out here to protect Louisiana from hurricanes the way Dubai is building resort islands for tourism? According to van Heerden, one reason is the Jones Act, a federal law that protects U.S. industry from foreign competition by forbidding use of dredges that are not built in the United States.

“And in our case, eliminates the potential of getting the dredges we really need,” van Heerden said.

When asked to characterize the kind of dredges at the state’s disposal currently, Penland said, “Oh, it's taking the navigational dredging technology and applying it when there’s a restoration job to that restoration job and then coming back. The bread and butter is navigation.”

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Yet Lee said dredges were not the limiting factor now.

“We can't design and get land rights and get the money and get it bid out and in place fast enough to keep these dredgers operating,” Lee said.

Those project leaders in Dubai have a vision and a $14-billion dollar budget. And even though land erosion here jeopardizes coastal communities and leaves southeast Louisiana's front door wide open to potential devastation from dangerous storms, coastal restoration has a very limited budget.

“About $50 million to $60 million a year,” Taylor said, “it's all a question of money.”

Taylor and Lee consider this New Cut Restoration a big success, but they acknowledge that only hints at the bigger need: billions of dollars in restoration that's crucial to saving coastal communities.

But the people in charge of this project say they can’t just go out and build a bunch of barrier islands until they replenish the marsh land because of what Lee describes as the "tidal prism," the huge amount of water that has moved in as marshes have eroded and now flows in and out with the tides.

“It would be very difficult and in my opinion almost futile to try to close these passes until you can reduce that volume,” Lee said. “Because what's going to happen you close this pass, that volume of water is going out somewhere else.”

Ivor van Heerden disagrees.

“I don't buy that, because what they’re trying to say is the bays are too big,” van Heerden said. “Well, that's something we can sort out with time. It's critical to get the barrier islands done now.”

Despite some disagreements on how to go about it, the restoration advocates Eyewitness News contacted are frustrated at the lack of funding, the lack of commitment and the lack of progress.

“There's a lot of talk but no action,” Penland said.

And they all agree time is quickly running out.

“I think this is an absolute emergency. This is a national emergency,” St. Pe said. “What this place produces for the rest of the country makes it a national emergency.

St. Pe stresses the situation is not hopeless yet. Dubai demonstrates what can be done. But unless the state gets a good start on restoring the coastline within 10 years, St. Pe said it may be too late.

In the meantime, the WRDA bill that Congress recently enacted authorizes $2.8 billion worth of projects for coastal restoration and hurricane protection in Louisiana, but it provides no actual funding. That money will have to come in separate spending bills.