The oil and gas companies brought in huge massive drilling rigs in the 1930s-1960s. The marsh was too soft/soggy to bring in the equipment overland, so they jus

The oil and gas companies brought in huge massive drilling rigs in the 1930s-1960s. The marsh was too soft/soggy to bring in the equipment overland, so they just... dredged huge canals in the soggy marsh a couple feet deep. You can see this in the opening shot of the video with the boat in the narrow canal. Labor was cheap and they were making a ton of money. They would put the dredged mud on one side of the channel, at random, causing random tracts to flood and most of the plants died, and then the marshes slowly sank below the water. One EPA report says for every acre of dredging they did (and they did a LOT) cause 3 more additional acres of erosion. If you go zoom in on the area where they're building, there are big squares and rectangles of dredging material, surrounding what look like square lakes. The state has been trying to get the oil and gas companies to restore the land but not much luck. Part of this deal with SpaceX (allegedly) is to restore the land and close off the canals to prevent further erosion.