Property Owners Propose Sites for Marsh Creation
Louisiana Landowners Help Rebuild Wetlands
For many Louisiana landowners, the crisis facing the coast is personal: They’ve seen their own property erode, subside and convert to open water. Those property owners can apply to recover some of that lost land — at no cost to them — through the Department of Natural Resources’ Dedicated Dredging Program.
Since 1997, the statefunded program has built marsh creation projects on privately owned wetlands in Jefferson Parish, Golden Meadow, south Terrebonne Parish, Lafourche Parish and the Mississippi Delta. The program restores land by pumping hydraulically dredged sediment into the project area. A typical site is around 40 acres of shallow water, contains no pipelines or other structures and is owned by just one landowner.
“One could argue that 40 acres isn’t much marsh, but rebuilding a small parcel of land can help protect an existing ridge or a larger section of wetland from erosion or saltwater intrusion. By restoring a variety of habitat in different areas of the coast, this program also helps preserve the state’s biodiversity,” says Rudy Simoneaux, DNR staff engineer. “Many of these landowners shrimp, hunt and fish — activities that depend on healthy wetlands. This program gives them a way to fight the land loss that threatens Louisiana’s wildlife and fisheries.”
Landowners interested in the DNR Dedicated Dredging Program can learn more about selection criteria and complete an application form at
http://dnr.louisiana.gov/crm/ coastres/ddp.asp.
At Grand Bayou Blue, DNR’s Dedicated Dredging Program restored 40 acres of privately owned wetland using a technique called “celled construction.” Engineers divided the project area into five cells bordered by containment dikes; when sediment pumped into the first cell (foreground) reached target elevation, workers notched a small weir into the dike, allowing the first cell to dewater into the second. “Past projects dewatered outside the project area, resulting in loss of dredged sediment,” explains Rudy Simoneaux. “By allowing the runoff to flow into the next cell, we kept that sediment within the project area instead of losing it to the surrounding open water.”
ConocoPhillips