Sept. 18 (Bloomberg) -- Carlton Dufrechou can fly 10 minutes from New Orleans and be over the open waters of the Mississippi Sound. Two decades earlier, before erosion took its toll, he would have looked down on lush wetlands.

The destruction accelerated four years ago last month, when Hurricane Katrina struck. The third-deadliest storm in U.S. history claimed more than 1,800 lives, displaced 1 million residents and damaged more than half of New Orleans’ housing stock. Katrina also wiped out 80 square miles of marsh within hours, four times the amount lost by the entire state in a year.

“Nothing close to that kind of one-day loss has ever happened in the country,” said Dufrechou, 53, an engineer and head of the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation, which is trying to restore wetlands in New Orleans and 16 Louisiana parishes. ...

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