BATON ROUGE -- What does it take to recreate 14,000 square miles of southeast Louisiana in 10,800 square feet? Something approaching $18 million.

That's how much money the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority is spending on a new laboratory and education building featuring a scaled model of the Mississippi River between Donaldsonville and the Gulf of Mexico. The 45,568-square-foot building, expected to open this fall, also will house researchers who will use the model to analyze flood control and land-building projects, part of the state's efforts to keep 24 parishes from disappearing into the gulf.

The model is made up of 216 foam panels, each weighing 700 pounds and measuring 5 feet by 10 feet by 1 foot. The foam is strong enough for researchers to walk on it.

A routing machine was used to carve each panel to scale, using survey data from 179 miles of the river. A millimeter on the model represents slightly more than 1 foot on the landscape, said Rudy Simoneaux, the project manager for the coastal authority.

Cut into the model are about 20 possible locations where engineers are considering diverting sediment from the river into degraded marsh areas, in hopes of restoring some wetlands that were lost in the past 85 years and holding onto the wetlands that remain. The sites include one for the Mid-Barataria sediment diversion project near Ironton and three possible locations for the Mid-Breton diversion.

"First, it's a laboratory because there is science and information coming off of this model," Simoneaux said. "We want to use this model to make sure the diversions are in the right locations, first and foremost. And this model will tell us that by transporting sediment."

Water and small pieces of black plastic, which will represent sediment, will be pumped into the model with a computer. Gauges along the model will help researchers to gain an understanding of how sediment moves through the river.

The entire model is painted white. Twenty projectors hanging from the ceiling can be used to display a single image on the model.

The state had a smaller model of the river to serve many of the same purposes. It was used by the coastal authority and LSU from 2002 to 2009.

The new model has more accurate contouring of the river and is scaled more accurately to size, Simoneaux said. Once it's finished, it will be owned and operated by LSU.

The building will serve as a lab for researchers and as an educational space for local schoolchildren to learn more about the landscape where they live. The dual mission will let students envision a career path in coastal science, said Clint Willson, an LSU engineering professor. "This could get them engaged and excited early on," he said.

Willson also hopes his college students will benefit from teaching younger students about their research. "Those things really help push the students to critically think about what experiment they're doing and how it translates to the actual river. So, that's where it's pretty darn exciting."