Baton Rouge Locks the Coastline in an Envelope and Tells the Marsh to Take a Number

Until the last lawsuit ends, the public has been handed a sealed drawer and asked to restore Louisiana from memory.

The State of Louisiana has taken its own coastline into protective custody, folded the marsh into a settlement nobody is allowed to read, and informed the public that the dollar figure is a private matter between an envelope, a judge, and whichever oil company still has a chair left in the room. What began in 2013 as forty-two lawsuits about canals, permits, and land that used to be there has, by Sunday morning in Baton Rouge, become a filing system in which Shell, Exxon, and BP have signed something, Chevron has not, and everyone else has been handed a locked drawer and told that opening it would injure the leverage, the recovery, and possibly the drawer. A clerk who asked to be identified only as the custodian of the unopened coast spent the morning labeling folders "do not look," "still do not look," and "this one might be a carbon credit wearing a marsh costume," then sent the pelicans a form letter explaining that restoration will be announced on a date to be named once every remaining case, including the ones involving smaller companies, has agreed to stop existing. By lunch the seal itself had been appointed interim coastline, given a parking space behind the capitol, and entered into negotiations to let an undisclosed number of plugged wells count as a beach, a barrier island, and a sufficient answer to anyone who asks where the money went. Residents who inquired how much was coming were issued visitor badges and a pamphlet titled "Your Coast Is in a Meeting," while a deputy was dispatched to the water with instructions to tell it that it would be restored just as soon as it signed a nondisclosure agreement and promised not to discuss its own depth. Officials insist the secrecy is how the state keeps its leverage, which in practice means Louisiana is currently rebuilding itself by refusing to say whether it has been paid, and the marsh has been asked to hold still, take a number, and erode quietly until the last envelope agrees to become a public record.

This is satire from The Cypress Knee.