Gov. Bobby Jindal is pushing for the creation of barrier islands to protect the delicate marshlands from oil creeping towards the Louisiana coast, but environmentalists said Wednesday that they doubt the plan will work.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which would approve the proposal, is reviewing it and is expected to respond within days.

If approved, Jindal’s plan would require both the federal government and BP to cover the estimated $350 million it would cost to dredge the Gulf of Mexico to fill the gaps in the barrier chain.

Jindal, who shunned the spotlight after his disastrous response to President Barack Obama’s address to Congress in February of last year, has drawn national attention by declaring a state of emergency, seeking federal assistance in the cleanup effort and holding almost daily news conferences on the spill.

During a boat tour Wednesday in Plaquemines Parish, whose coastline is threatened by the approaching oil slick, the governor said the spill “fundamentally threatens Louisiana’s way of life.”

“The oil is here, and the time to act is now,” the governor said in a press release Wednesday. “We are asking the Corps to approve our dredging plan without any further delay.”

But environmentalists are questioning the feasibility of the governor’s levee plan, saying dredging could take several months to build the barrier, which would need to be about 300 feet by 6 feet tall, to be effective.

“Seems a little late in the game,” said Mary Lee Orr, executive director of the Louisiana Environmental Action Network. “It doesn’t seem the most thought-out plan.”

BP officials, who have reviewed the plan, said they have identified several outstanding issues that need to be addressed before considering the proposal, including the effectiveness of the measure, the pace of construction and potential opposition from environmental groups that may delay the process. BP would be left in the lurch if it paid millions to build the barrier levees and then faced delays because of lawsuits brought by environmental groups.

“If permits are granted for this project,” asked Tom Mueller, BP spokesman, were officials certain that groups such as Sierra Club or Greenpeace “won’t sue to overturn permits, thus delaying the project for an indeterminate period of time?”

In addition to the buildup of the barrier islands, the governor is proposing other alternatives to contain the spread of the estimated 210,000 gallons of oil flowing into the Gulf each day. His alternatives include flexible tubes called “tiger dams” that are used to keep floodwaters at bay; metal baskets called “HESCO barriers” that have fabric sides and are filled with soil; and freshwater diversions, which is simply an injection of fresh water into the Gulf.

Paul Orr, an activist with the group Lower Mississippi Riverkeeper, called the governor’s plan ambitious and said it would take more than six months to dredge and build the barrier islands.

“It’s a huge engineering undertaking,’’ Orr said. “We’ve got 70,000 miles of coast if you take into account all the nooks and crannies.” He added, ”We appreciate that the governor is trying to think of ways to sum this up, but this doesn’t seem like the best answer that we’ve heard so far.”

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