U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, during a trip to southern Louisiana on Friday, applauded the state's plan to restore its coast.

Jewell reviewed the $50 billion, 50-year plan to protect the state's coast from the effects of storm surge while touring Jean Lafitte National Park's Barataria Preserve.

The funds for the plan will come from fines assessed from the 2010 BP oil disaster.

"Many of us in the country watched with horror the hurricanes Katrina and Rita and thought will this city that is actually below sea level be able to survive over the long term?'' she told The (New Orleans) Times-Picayune. "What I've heard and seen today is the plan to learn from Mother Nature and to apply those lessons of Mother Nature to physically save the future, the history, the culture, the economic opportunity that's here in Louisiana. That's very encouraging.''

Jewell said she encouraged green initiatives as part of the master plan.

"Mother Nature actually does a pretty good job when we let her, when we learn from her,'' she said

The Louisiana coast is losing some 16 square miles of land each year due to climate change, drilling and dredging for oil and gas, and levees on the Mississippi River. By 2100, much of the wetlands outside the levees in Louisiana could be underwater, creating a coast that runs nearly straight east and west.