[StBernard] Gulf Outlet unlikely to close

[Westley Annis]

Gulf Outlet unlikely to close
But some plans seek to add storm gates 
Monday, April 24, 2006
By Matthew Brown
West Bank bureau 

There are plenty of reasons offered to get rid of the Mississippi River-Gulf
Outlet, the shipping channel carved through wetlands in St. Bernard Parish
as a shortcut to the Gulf of Mexico. 

Over the past four decades, salt water rushing through the 76-mile waterway
has killed off the marshes that lined its banks, allowing the wakes of
passing ships to chew away the region's wetland storm buffer at the rate of
up to 30 feet per year. After Hurricane Betsy in 1965 and again after
Katrina, the Gulf Outlet, or MR-GO, was blamed for amplifying storm surges
that killed hundreds of people in St. Bernard Parish, the 9th Ward and
eastern New Orleans. And before Katrina shoaled up the outer reaches of the
channel, making it inaccessible to deep-draft ships, maritime traffic
already had sharply declined in recent years. 

Yet from the moment the first dredge cut into the marshes east of New
Orleans to excavate the MR-GO in 1958, there has been scant possibility of
turning back. As badly as many residents in St. Bernard and New Orleans
would like to see it vanish, the channel likely will remain a scar across
southeast Louisiana for years to come, according to federal officials,
scientists and fishers who use the channel or have grappled with its
effects. 

"The channel is a disaster, and it has been since it was built. But now
we're stuck with it, so you just have to deal with what you've got," said
John Koerner III, a New Orleans businessman who was chairman of the flood
protection subcommittee for Mayor Ray Nagin's Bring New Orleans Back
Commission. 

Almost all proposals to close the MR-GO -- and there are many -- actually
would keep the channel open in some fashion. Several proposals would add
gates to control storm surges. Others involve restoration projects to shore
up the waterway's banks, and the reduction of the channel's 40-foot depth to
anywhere from 12 to 28 feet. But the MR-GO, originally 650 feet across and
now as wide as 2,000 feet in some stretches, still would be there. Filling
it in and turning the clock back to 1957 is not considered a viable option. 

In November, Congress prohibited the Army Corps of Engineers from resuming
dredging of the channel until a decision is made on whether it will remain
forever closed to deep-draft vessels. Over the past 20 years, dredging costs
have averaged more than $16 million annually and totaled $322 million. 

For now, the corps, which built and maintains the channel, has requested
$350 million for a pair of navigable floodgates that could be closed when
major storms threaten the region. One would be at the Paris Road bridge
along Interstate 510 north of Chalmette, the other at the Seabrook Bridge
near Lakefront Airport, at the back end of the Industrial Canal where water
flowing through the MR-GO enters Lake Pontchartrain. 

The floodgate at the Paris Road Bridge would be at least 36 feet deep, said
the corps' Al Naomi, leaving unsettled the question of whether the channel
should be shallower. Naomi said that depth is needed to accommodate
operations to the east of the bridge along the Michoud Canal, but would not
preclude a shallower MR-GO in the future. 

The corps has said levees near the floodgates will be raised to handle any
added stress caused if storm surges get bottled up against the gates. No
particulars have been offered, and St. Bernard officials fear their parish
could get swamped again if the floodgates are built and the levees don't
hold. 

A spokesman for Parish President Henry "Junior" Rodriguez said Sunday that
he hoped more details of the corps' plan would be revealed today, when
agency officials are scheduled to testify before the Louisiana House
Transportation Committee. 

Rodriguez has come under criticism in St. Bernard for earlier endorsing
maintaining the MR-GO as a 28-feet deep channel. That would allow most
ocean-going ships to continue using it. 

Spokesman Charles Reppel said Rodriguez is not fully committed to that depth
and wants to hear the corps' recommendation. 

"We want total closure, but we don't think we're going to get it, so we want
alternatives," Reppel said. "It could be 28 feet, it could be 16 feet it
could be 12 feet. We have to hear what the corps says first." 

The corps also requested $100 million for coastal restoration projects. Most
would address wetlands loss east of New Orleans, including $35 million for
projects to mitigate erosion near the MR-GO. 

That would address only a small portion of the ecological havoc wrought by
the shipping channel. Erosion attributed to the Gulf Outlet has caused the
destruction of at least 27,000 acres of wetlands around Lake Borgne and
Breton Sound, according to a corps report on its environmental impacts. 

By placing greater emphasis on floodgates and levees, John Lopez of the Lake
Pontchartrain Basin Foundation said, the corps plan is short-sighted. "You
need to do levees, but you need to put something in front of the water,"
Lopez said, referring to the wetlands' ability to blunt storm surges. "You
can build really big levees, and maybe that will work for a while. But as
the coast gets closer and closer, it's going to put more pressure on those
levees." 

Lopez's group recommends spending $280 million to constrict the MR-GO to 12
feet deep and 125 feet wide. The money also would restore a natural ridge
that runs along Bayou la Loutre and bulk up a battered strip of wetlands
between Lake Borgne and the shipping channel. 

But the corps' twin floodgate proposal meshes closely with another plan,
crafted by Koerner and others in the city's business community and backed by
members of the New Orleans Dock Board. 

They argue for building a pair of 28-feet deep weirs that could be closed
during storms, including one at Paris Road and a second at Bayou la Loutre
near Hopedale. One difference from the corps proposal would be a permanent
dam at Seabrook instead of a floodgate. Also, the business group plan
suggests using submersible bargelike vessels instead of gates to close the
Paris Road and Bayou la Loutre flood-control structures. 

Koerner said those features could reduce the cost of the corps' proposal by
more than half, to between $100 million and $135 million. 

It also would keep the channel open to all but the biggest ships serving
businesses along the Industrial Canal. 

"I don't know what you accomplish by driving the ships out but to vent some
frustration," Koerner said. "You haven't stopped the saltwater erosion, and
you haven't improved public safety one ounce." 

That's a far cry from the more radical closure proposals coming out of St.
Bernard, where the name "Mister Go" is uttered with contempt and officials
have promised a violent reaction from their constituents if dredging
resumes. 

Corps officials contend flooding in St. Bernard and eastern New Orleans
during Katrina was caused primarily by a surge coming across Lake Borgne --
not up the so-called "hurricane highway" of the MR-GO. The same argument was
made in 1965, after Betsy flooded the parish soon after the shipping channel
opened. 

That argument is roundly rejected in St. Bernard. Parish Council Vice
Chairman Joey DiFatta said St. Bernard's first choice is to fill in the
channel. 

A report completed by the corps last summer said that's not likely to happen
via natural processes anytime soon. While the outer reaches of the waterway
would fill in due to natural shoaling to a depth of 8 feet within 8 years,
the interior stretch would "not experience significant shoaling" even after
50 years, the corps report concluded. 

In the meantime, scientists warn the sides of the channel would continue to
widen through erosion, with the banks sloughing off into the bottom of the
channel without significantly reducing its potential to magnify storm
surges. 

DiFatta said a more effective option would be to fill it in by dredging sand
from the bottom of the Mississippi River. DiFatta said the cost of such a
project was not known. 

When the channel was built, more material was removed than it took to build
the Panama Canal. In the intervening four decades, most of the surrounding
land lost to erosion was later removed by dredging, with much of that dumped
in Breton Sound. 

"It just doesn't make sense," Lopez said. "Basically, you'd have to create a
hole just to fill the hole you're filling." 

A "secondary" plan backed by the St. Bernard Council would reduce the
channel depth to 12 to 14 feet by building water-control structures
including one in the vicinity of Bayou la Loutre, DiFatta said. That would
keep the channel open to fishing boats and oil service vessels that have
continued to use it since Katrina. 

The idea matches proposals offered by Lopez's group and also the policy
stance taken by the Governor's Advisory Commission on Coastal Protection,
Restoration and Conservation. 

A 12-foot depth will serve as the state's "benchmark" in pending
negotiations between the state and the corps over what should be done with
the channel, said Sidney Coffee, Gov. Kathleen Blanco's executive assistant
for coastal activities and chairman of the Louisiana Coastal Protection and
Restoration Authority. 

Left hanging while that debate continues are at least seven businesses along
the Industrial Canal that depend at least in part on access to the Gulf
through the channel. 

The Port of New Orleans has said it would go along with a closure of the
channel if the state or federal governments could come up with $382 million
to relocate those businesses. After appealing to the Louisiana Recovery
Authority for that money last week, port CEO Gary LaGrange was told to
narrow that request to address businesses at the most immediate risk. 

"There's going to have to be a business case made on a dollar-per-job
basis," said LRA Executive Director Andy Kopplin. 

. . . . . . . 


Matthew Brown can be reached at mbrown at timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3784.