Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana

In Louisiana we love good stories.  Good stories can bring people together and in Louisiana good stories happen in great places. Throughout my career with the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana, I am often asked how I became interested in the coast and I always enjoy the opportunity to share my story.

Like many kids in south Louisiana I grew up hunting and fishing.  I learned to drive a boat before I could drive a car and my mother taught me how to make a roux long before both.  I spent long weekends helping my father build our houseboat where our time together made me feel like a man and allowed my father to act like a boy.  I earned my college tuition by working along the coast in the oil and gas industry. I worked on dive boats, laid pipelines, removed marine debris and found time to catch a few snapper in between.  I learned about Louisiana’s working coast from welders in Fourchon, oil riggers in Dulac, shrimpers in Intracoastal City and boat captains in Cameron.

By the time I finished college I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but I knew who I was.  I realized that this incredible Louisiana landscape had taught me to hunt and fish, had helped me pay for my education, had protected my home from hurricanes and had brought my family closer together. I like to say I was raised in coastal Louisiana, but the fact is coastal Louisiana raised me.

During my work with the Coalition, I’ve met thousands of people with similar stories from similar places, a true coalition of people who share the same connection to coastal Louisiana.  Tragically, sometimes their stories are all that remain as many of the places have disappeared.  In less than a century Louisiana has lost thousands of miles of coastal wetlands and barrier shoreline and recent hurricanes remind us that our lives and our landscape remain vulnerable. This is the story we now have to tell.

But the story of coastal Louisiana isn’t just about losing land or recovering from hurricanes, it’s about everyone who enjoys, works or lives in coastal Louisiana and what we stand to lose.  It is about a way of life that is directly tied to our disappearing coast. We all have a story to tell and we all have a place that is worth protecting and only by working together can we restore this great landscape so that future generations will have great stories to tell as well.

Steven Peyronnin
Executive Director, Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana