Grand Isle and the state plan to restore Fort Livingston as a tourist attraction. What the salt air isn t getting, the surf is. As we walked around, Benninger noted how much of the island and fort have disappeared. Grand Terre is perhaps half its original size, and most of the fort is gone. Erosion slowly eats away all the barrier islands Grand Isle and Terre, Fifi, Queen Bess, even bits of land such as Cheniere.
Erosion happens down here largely due to the levees along the Mississippi River up north.
Before levees, the river flooded the surrounding land often. Every year there were spring floods. If swamps are wetlands, barrier islands are wetlands built up enough to dry, built up higher from spring floods. But there are no spring floods anymore. And so the waves have their way with the shoreline.