A Case Study: Cameron-Creole Watershed Project

The 113,000-acre Cameron-Creole Project is located in the southeast corner of the 67-square-mile Calcasieu Lake. Surrounded by one million acres of Chenier Plain wetlands, the project’s expanses of open water and marsh merge with the small streams and bayous that provide drainage and water exchange.

Prior to the 1950s, marshes in the project area were vigorous and stable. In 1951, the Calcasieu River, which runs through the heart of the project, underwent extensive dredging and deepening to form the Calcasieu Ship Channel. The enlarged channel altered the flow of water to, from and within Cameron-Creole’s marshes. Influenced by storms and tidal movement, salt water from the Gulf of Mexico entered the channel at a faster rate and penetrated further north. Simultaneously, the rate at which fresh water was flowing out of the marshes increased. By the mid-1950s, the marshes were rapidly deteriorating. Vegetation, affected by changes in salt concentrations, weakened and died. Exposed to wind, waves and tide, the stressed marshes began to convert to open water and mud flats. Erosion, driven by the same forces, was destroying Calcasieu Lake’s shoreline rim, further threatening the marsh environment.

In 1962, a group of concerned Cameron Parish residents met with the USDA Soil Conservation Service (now the Natural Resources Conservation Service) and suggested a plan to save and restore the East Cove Marsh. Subsequently, under the local sponsorship of Cameron Parish Gravity Drainage Districts Three and Four, the parish police jury and the water district, the Natural Resources Conservation Service engineered a work plan designed to combat erosion and restore natural wetland water processes. The plan included extensive modifications that reduced concerns about the project’s impact on estuarine-dependent fish and shellfish.

Initial work on the Cameron-Creole Watershed Project began in the early 1970s. Between then and the project’s completion in 1989, a 19-mile-long lakeshore protection levee was constructed, five water control structures were designed and installed, numerous improvements to water flowage were made and a detailed operations plan, which included provisions for fisheries access to the project marshes, was finalized. The water control structures, designed to allow the movement of marine organisms from Calcasieu Lake to the interior marshes, incorporated six-inch-wide vertical openings that provide a passageway through the structure. Then, in the 1990s, Breaux Act dollars began to flow into the project in the form of structures within the Calcasieu Lake Levee Borrow Canal and the repair of the Grand Bayou structure.

Local residents have been prominent contributors to the success of Cameron-Creole. They initiated the project with the objective of not merely preventing further loss but recovering what was destroyed. Now, after three decades of  effort, much of that objective has been achieved, and Cameron-Creole has become a linchpin in Louisiana’s argument that recovery of wetlands is a real possibility

Additional Cameron-Creole Project information, utilizing Geographic Information System (GIS) open water/vegetation data will be available by January 2001.

Number of Alligator Nests Up 1,000 Percent

 Ted Joanen, a wildlife consultant for landholders within Cameron-Creole, says the statistical data on alligators clearly show that the project has been a success. Annually, Joanen counts alligator nests in the project, and, as the chart at right shows, there has been a remarkable increase in the number of nests produced each season since completion of the project.

Average Salinity Levels Drop by 42 Percent

According to Cameron-Prairie National Wildlife Refuge biologist Glenn Harris, overall salinities have decreased dramatically since 1989. “It’s only during periods of drought that they increase to levels detrimental to marsh vegetation—and even then, the recovery period is short,” says Harris.

Waterfowl Numbers Up an Average of 77 Percent

According to Glenn Harris, wildlife biologist for the Cameron-Prairie Wildlife Refuge, submerged vegetation was virtually absent prior to completion of the watershed project. Harris says that following construction of the project’s water control structures, water conditions improved, stimulating a regrowth of submerged vegetation that has attracted an abundance of waterfowl.

Freshwater Plants Increase 107 Percent—Brackish Plants Decline

Marty Floyd, NRCS biologist and project manager for Cameron-Creole, noted that reductions in salinity levels have allowed freshwater plants to flourish. “This is a very positive change,” says Floyd, “and the direct result of the improved water quality brought about by the project.”