Southeast LA land loss news

[specknation]

Originally Posted by Smalls

I never said I disagreed with you on that. And AGAIN, it does not work everywhere. Look back to some of my last posts in this thread. The SOUTHEAST is an entirely different beast. Most of the soils there are organic. When you lose vegetation on an organic soil, you are going to lose soil quickly. You cannot revegetate what is not there. AGAIN, it only works when it is well planned. Is any of this registering?

PLANNING IS EVERYTHING!!! You can have the greatest idea in the world, but poor execution will cause it to fail. The WEST side of the state where I work is completely different than the EAST. What we do here does not necessarily work there,and vice-versa.

With all that being said, there are new methods of revegetation being employed on that side of the state that have been successful in the west, and it has nothing to do with soils. Floating Islands.

AGAIN, I never said the marsh was coming back down in those areas. Everything you are saying, I already know. I've been researching this for quite some time now. And I have never used any of those places as examples of successful revegetation projects. Fact is, I agree with you. Only one way to reverse wetland loss in southeast Louisiana--take down the levees. Won't happen, so what can be done is being done. Whether you or anyone else disagrees with it, is IRRELEVANT. It's either do what you can, or sit back and watch it all disappear.

Fact of the matter is, you aren't going to save things by trying to revert back to the natural state. The natural state of things is history. What is there now is as natural as your going to get. There are large scale diversions in the plans now, the likes that have not been employed before. You're not going to knock a levee down, as you said. But you can punch pretty good size holes in it and let some sediment flow.

That were you drop the ball Smalls, I worked for LDWF and we where responsible for lifting and closing the Bohemia diversion structure located in Plaq. parish. Quoting you "you can punch good size holes in it and let some sediment flow" lets me know you have not a clue of what you are talking about. This diversion structure was a huge hole that let miss. river water run at a crazy rate, the effects of this structure was virtually 0.

[Duck Butter]

Originally Posted by specknation

That were you drop the ball Smalls, I worked for LDWF and we where responsible for lifting and closing the Bohemia diversion structure located in Plaq. parish. Quoting you "you can punch good size holes in it and let some sediment flow" lets me know you have not a clue of what you are talking about. This diversion structure was a huge hole that let miss. river water run at a crazy rate, the effects of this structure was virtually 0.

What is the purpose of the Bohemia diversion? Sediment? Freshwater? Flood Relief?

Doubt it was put in place specifically with the goal of building land, but curious to what the stated purpose is/was.



One other thing that needs to be addressed is oysters. People are crying that the oysters are all going to die if the freshwater gets on them, yada yada, etc. Oysters can not tolerate extreme salinities, they need some freshwater (Caernarvon diversion was actually praised by oystermen upon its implementation). There are several areas where manmade oyster reefs have been placed along the shorelines of Louisiana. There is a mile of it on the backside of Grand Isle. The salinity range is too high there and therefore the oysters are not doing as well as they are in other areas. Oyster drills are taking their toll on them as well. However, just down the road in Vermilion Bay, the same artificial reefs are growing oysters very very well. These reefs are right at the pass of Vermilion Bay near Marsh Island. This area ranges in salinity greatly, and has plenty of cfs of freshwater running thru it daily and especially during the flood year of 2011, yet the oysters were booming there. Getting off topic, sorry

[Duck Butter]

Link to Smalls referenced site:

The Bohemia Spillway area—a 12-mile reach on the east bank of the Mississippi River approximately 45 miles downriver of New Orleans—is a focus of research by the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation (LPBF). The spillway has a fascinating history. In the 1920s, New Orleans residents had great fear of flooding from the Mississippi River, so the state authorized removal of artificial river levees to create a relief outlet for floodwater. In 1926, the artificial river flood protection levees near the Bohemia Plantation were removed, thus creating the Bohemia Spillway. This flood protection project also fortuitously created a wonderful scientific experiment of reintroducing the river floodwater to the adjacent wetlands.
Land Change map comparing east Bohemia Spillway to the west bank patterns of wetlands loss. (Courtesy USGS - Couvillion and others, 2011).

We find today that the wetlands near the spillway are healthier and more resilient than elsewhere in Louisiana. Other than some modest shoreline erosion, the wetlands seem very stable. Other causes of land loss do not seem to be active. Typically elsewhere, oil and gas canals create direct loss of wetlands and an indirect effect by changing the wetland hydrology. Many areas of coastal Louisiana have lingering land loss by canals created decades earlier. Not so in Bohemia. There is no pattern of “indirect loss”. Rather, many canals are filling in with sediment and marsh. Some have been completely reclaimed back to marsh. The response to the oil and gas canals is one of resilience rather than weakness. This resiliency is probably due to the river’s reconnection 85 years earlier.
LPBF has been investigating the spillway since 2007. During the great spring flood of 2011, a major effort was undertaken to research and understand the interaction of the river’s overbank flooding and effect on the wetlands. It is hoped that some of these documented natural processes can be replicated elsewhere in coastal Louisiana to make the coast more resilient.
LPBF will be releasing a major report on the spillway in 2012, as well as releasing a video introducing the Bohemia Spillway and this research.

[Reefman]

Originally Posted by Duck Butter

One other thing that needs to be addressed is oysters. People are crying that the oysters are all going to die if the freshwater gets on them, yada yada, etc.

Oysters will be our un-doing. I can't understand how powerful the oyster lobbyist have become. These people can stop a project before it gets off the ground. I bet BL guides might have an opinion or two about what these oystermen can do to lake.

[Duck Butter]

Originally Posted by Reefman

Oysters will be our un-doing. I can't understand how powerful the oyster lobbyist have become. These people can stop a project before it gets off the ground. I bet BL guides might have an opinion or two about what these oystermen can do to lake.

They have deep pockets due to cheap labor. Oysters are obviously not sustaining themselves very well in the traditional zones because most of the harvests are from cultch that are seeded. There are reasons that the oysters are not doing well, and many of the projects that could help get silenced quickly. The Coastal Master Plan is law though, so maybe we can finally get some large-scale projects off the ground. And what is funny to me is that all these folks who are trying to contact senators and get the word out about these proposed diversions had never even heard of the CMP even though it has been around for over 6 years. There were public meetings announced on every outdoors website that I know

People can cherry pick their data, and one guide who is very vocal against diversions actually pulled up a paper during an interview and began to read the abstract that appeared to favor his opinion. However, if you read a little further, the exact opposite was true