Elevated Houses and Multiple Lines of Defense in the Louisiana Wetlands and in the Missouri and Tennessee Wetlands

In January as we were all talking about the inauguration of a new president and his stimulus program, I wrote several times about infrastructure as stimulus. I included this graphic that comes from the Comprehensive Recommendations Supporting the Use of the Multiple Lines of Defense Strategy to Sustain Coastal Louisiana, published in August 2007. The writers’ strategy [...]

“No Net Loss of Wetlands” Wetlands as Infrastructure

It has been almost twenty years since President George H.W. Bush pledged “No net loss of wetlands.”
This year Louisiana will have, for the first time in a very long time, “no net loss of wetlands.” Louisiana has a surplus and much of it is going into wetland restoration, 4,000 acres restored in 2009.
This year folks [...]

MRGO is Closed but not Gone

I am working on the index and page proofs for my book on the Mississippi River, how it was formed, what we have done to change it, and how we are trying to restore it.
Hence, I present you with an oldie, but goody: MRGO. Go to my catagories section and find the other postings on [...]

Grand Isle and the Spring Migration

 
Spring is here and its wet in Waterloo, Illinois. Robins and grackles are bathing in the puddles in the grass.  The ganders are jousting, their necks extended like lances, vying for who gets which nesting place on which pond. They will continue this behavior until the fledglings are out of the nest and swimming in [...]

Infrastructure: Morganza-to-the-Gulf Hurricane Protection

 
 
 

 
 
During the Fall of 2006 it was apparent at Dulac, Lower Dulac, and on Bayou du Large that the activities the marshes generate–the shrimping, the crabbing, the fishing, and the new fishing camps raised on stilts–disguised the disaster than had happened the year before and the disaster happening underfoot. The land is sinking at the [...]

Ecosystem Restoration as Infrastructure–MRGO Part 6

In March 2007 the New Orleans Times-Picayune created a flow chart of the approval process for coastal restoration projects, actually for any large restoration project in any state.
The chart illustrated the bureaucratic roadblocks to ecosystem restoration.
A state, a county, or, in Louisiana, a parish identifies a project and asks its Congressional representation to initiate a [...]

Political Art Redux

Tomorrow is a new day.

Ecosysem Restoration as Infrastructure–MRGO Part 5

 
The construction company building the closure will barge stone down the Mississippi River through Baptiste Collette near Venice, travel across Breton Sound, and access the MRGO from the east.  The company had to take this route because the Inner Harbor Navigation Canal  gives barges access to MRGO from the Mississippi and  the canal is closed, because the [...]

Ecosystem Restoration as Infrastructure–MRGO, Part 4

 
 
 

In December 2008 the Corps of Engineers issued it feasibility study for the closure of MRGO. A rock closing dam would be built across the channel south of Bayou la Loutre. Construction should be completed by June 2009 and turned over to the State of Louisiana for operation and maintenance. 
 
A marsh would be built at [...]

Ecosystem Restoration as Infrastructure–MRGO, Part 3

 
 
It was somehow appropriate that the residents of St. Bernard Parish should put their memorial to those who died during Katrina at the intersection of Bayou la Loutre and MRGO. It was the cut through the Bayou la Loutre ridge that changed everything in the Pontchartrain basin.
By 2000 Louisianans had developed a consensus that MRGO [...]