Big Lake Work
 

Spent Monday, Tuesday and Friday last week on the water every day from 6:30 to 2, but couldn't fish at all. Spent the week taking soil samples from the lake for the Louisiana Environmental Research Center in Lake Charles. Monday and Tuesday we took samples from the ship channel from just south of Haymark loop to just south of Hackberry. Friday we took samples down the east bank, about 300 yards off the shore, around the south end, areas through the old jetties, then north on the west bank. Ended the week with 60 samples. Hopefully next week the weather will cooperate a little better.

Friday morning the water looked great, especially to the south. Wish I could have been fishing instead of working, such a tease being on the lake when it was so calm.

After the samples dry out for a couple weeks, we're gonna crush them into powder and send them into LSU research for chemical breakdown and mineral composition. Lots and lots of the samples were silty. A few samples had a silty composition but also contained organic matter. The ones in the ship channel were the worst. From the center of the ship channel about 40 feet down, the sample was complete "goop" for lack of a better term. I can't even begin to imagine what pollutants are in the soil down there from years and years of shipping.

One main suspicion of the suspected substances being circulated through the lake is by use of dredging. Once we get the results from LSU we'll be able to exactly know what all is down there. But until that time, we won't know for sure. We want to maintain the health of the lake, and be able to set forth a good step in the conservation of Big Lake.

Gonna be out there next week too, and the "doctor" driving the boat is still a newbie. I can't drive because it is McNeese State Property. I tell him over and over to drive away from other people who are fishing, but it must not register with him. If you see a flat bottom aluminum driving around the lake with mcneese state sticker, and he gets too close, forgive him lol.:hairout:

Thanks for the report, would like to know about the final results.

Please post the results when you receive them! Thanks for checking our water here in SWLA.

x2....:)

When was the last time anyone did "soil" sampling in the Big Lake / Ship channel area?

Surely testing has be done other times.

I have the cure for you "doctor" driver!!!

Introduce me to him...........please!!!!

The Louisiana Environmental Research Center based in Lake Charles has not done previous soil testing. Along with the health of the lake, we are trying to determine if dredging would be more efficient if they pumped the dredge material farther along instead of dredging the lake every so often. Testing the soil would provide answers to both, because if the sediments that are spewed by the dredge machine end up almost back in place a few years later, it would be more efficient for these companies to spend a little more up front and pump the dredge some where else...preferably to create new freshwater marsh environment. We're trying.