La. Sen. Mary Landrieu seeks up to $1B a year for Gulf restoration, but White House mum

NEW ORLEANS – Sen. Mary Landrieu is pushing for up to $1 billion a year to restore Louisiana's battered and oily coastline.

But President Barack Obama's point man in the Gulf says the administration is not yet ready to commit such an amount.

Navy Secretary Ray Mabus on Wednesday took his first flight over Louisiana's fast-eroding marshes since his appointment last month to head up the recovery from the BP spill.

Mabus says the administration wants to make the marshes even better than before the spill, but adds that it is "too early" to say how much that will cost or where the money will come from.

Louisiana has lost 2,300 square miles of coastal wetlands since the 1930s because of canals dug for energy exploration, hurricanes and levees along the Mississippi River.