wrong on all accounts gottago:
By JOHN GUIDROZ / AMERICAN PRESS
Nearly 20 acres of open water next to the Interstate 210 bridge should be completely converted into wetlands within 18 months, according to officials with PPG Industries.
“There’s probably nowhere you can have more visibility of coastal restoration than exactly where this is occurring,” said Mike Huber, PPG environmental projects manager. “Everybody coming across the interstate can see it happening.”
The effort is the last phase in a $10.8-million project funded by PPG to remediate and reroute the more than 60-year-old water discharge canal at its local facility.
Stream Wetlands Services was hired by PPG to work on the project, which began last February. The Coastal Conservation Association assisted PPG and Stream in designing the project.
The discharge point was moved from Bayou D’Inde to the Calcasieu River by digging 4,500 feet of new canal.
About 80,000 cubic yards of dredged material from the rerouting phase was used to create the wetlands site. Huber said that about five acres of existing wetlands was destroyed during the rerouting.
In an agreement with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, PPG was required to restore at least eight acres of wetlands.
Dean Roberts, nursery manager for Stream Wetlands Services, said levees were placed along the perimeter of the area to contain the dredged material and control water levels.
He said that four different species of marsh grasses will be planted as a buffer that will “prevent wave action from deteriorating the levees.”
Once the grasses are removed from the nurseries, Roberts said, they must be planted within 48 hours to maintain their viability. Close to 30,000 plants should be planted by the end of this month, he said.
The four grasses include:
Roseau cane, which will serve as the first line of defense to prevent erosion along the containment levees.
Marsh hay cordgrass and joint grass, which will spread across the tops of the levees to protect them and provide benefits to marine wildlife.
Oyster grass, which will help solidify the dredged materials by tolerating salt from saline waters that come into the site.
Some of the grasses were grown for three to six months in greenhouses at the Gray Estate on Shell Beach Drive, Roberts said. The rest were cultivated at an off-site state nursery south of Carlyss.
David Richard, executive vice president of Stream Wetlands, said the effort is a “model project” that uses “methods that should be used on all dredged material in Louisiana.”
“There’s millions of cubic yards that are being dumped off (Outer) Continental Shelf that should be used beneficially,” he said.
Richard said the plants should be visible from the I-210 bridge as early as July.
He said that Stream officials will monitor the site for at least three years to meet corps specifications.
|