It will be interesting to see how this plays out. People have already started hoarding water a month in advance of the arrival of the "salt wedge"... The last time this happened in New Orleans was 1988 and lasted ~2 months[1], life continued, and the event was largely forgotten.

From a post on /r/neworleans: "In the last event sales of bottled water skyrocketed before the event. Once the salt wedge arrived, sales went down and everyone stopped buying water. Data suggested public didn't view the situation as sufficiently threatening enough to continue buying water."

So it doesn't seem to be the 'emergency' that media is trying to make it out as... Seems like the larger issues are increased heavy metal contamination from the salt and silt relocation affecting the health of the delta and related ecosystems...

The current plan is to ship in fresh water, which is what was done last time, and also there is talk about building a fresh water pipeline in the next 30 days that would extend ~12 miles up river. [2]

[1] current estimate is that current the situation will last ~3 months

[2] https://www.wwltv.com/article/news/local/saltwater-intrusion...