[StBernard] MRGO

[Westley Annis]

 -- "Sharp (Landrieu's assisstant) said. "The Corps in six months must
present a list of what projects must be authorized to close it and protect
the wetlands."  Mr. Go is used by about 650 deep-draft ships a year." --

It seems after having numerous public hearings and a symposium they still
can't get the numbers straight.  No, the MRGO is NOT used by 650 deep draft
ships a year....it's only half that.  They are counting as a "trip" one
ships single passage in and out.  In other words, they counting a round trip
as "two" trips - what a joke!  So, in reality, there's only about 325 ships
that use the MRGO each year - less than one per day..  But wait...even that
"325" figure is very misleading.  Those 325 trips each year by deep draft
vessels are comprised of only 3 or 4 different ships - ships that deliver to
the same 3 or 4 tenants in the inner-harbor canal of the MRGO.  So, that
means each of those tenants only receive their own ships about once or twice
a week.  So for all these many years the MRGO has been keep open by Congress
(and at a losing cost ratio) for each of those tenants for just one or maybe
two ship deliveries a week.  Talk about your "white elephants."

How do I know this.  In February of 2004 I approached Junior Rodriguez with
the idea of holding a symposium on the MRGO to once and for all expose its
economic ineptness.  Junior gave me the green light to proceed and I
contacted John Grimm with Multi-Quest International in Metairie, an
outstanding researcher and considered by many to be the naiton's best public
opinion pollsters.  Our goal was to expose how an earlier economic study
done by Dr. Tim Ryan with UNO was inflated with dollar figures as to the
economic benefits of leaving the MRGO open.

Four months later in June the symposium became a reality - the first of its
kind.  In attendance was Sen. Mary Landrieu, the commander of the Corps of
Engineers New Orleans, congressional staff from around the state, and
several state legislators from all over Louisiana, plus our local
delegation.  We presented the findings of our research which "called the
bluff" of Dr. Ryan's findings.  Ryan's study claimed the region was
benefiting from millions of dollars being brought in by the MRGO for various
services that did NOT even exist.  Through the course of the presentation I
paid close attention to the COE colonel and his staff.  You can see it on
their faces they realized they might have been "duped" by the Ryan study's
claims of the MRGO's economic worth.

We took all the officials out on the water for a tour of the MRGO, pointing
out all the coastal and enviromental damage it has caused over the past 40
years, then made the presentation giving copies of "our" findings.  The
print and tv news media also covered the event.

I have no doubt the symposium was successful as the first step in getting
Congress to take the action it did this past week.  If nothing else, it
presented a "theory" of what could happen to St. Bernard parish.
Unfortunately, Hurricane Katrina supplied the proof.  But still, even with
all the destruction and loss of life the MRGO brough upon St. Bernard, I am
absolutely confident in my belief that if the MRGO was in fact an economic
assest to the region, Congress would have ignored the destruction and deaths
it caused, and would have found an excuse to keep it open.  The findings of
our 2004 symposium study supplied the additional justification needed for
Congress to finally look at closing this menace.

John Scurich



----- Original Message -----

> -----------------------------------------------------

> Corps of Engineers working on plan to close MRGO

>

> 6/10/2006, 3:33 p.m. CT

> By MARY FOSTER

> The Associated Press

>

>

> NEW ORLEANS (AP) - Congress' authorization of money to be spent by the

Corps

> of Engineers to develop a plan to close the Mississippi River Gulf 

> Outlet

to

> deep-draft shipping had environmentalists celebrating this weekend.

>

> It's a first step, and it's a tremendous step," Carlton Dufrechou,

executive

> director of the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation, said Saturday.

>

> Congress last month authorized $3.5 million to draw up a plan to close 

> the controversial channel, known locally as "Mr. Go", at least to 

> deep-draft shipping.

> "That's like saying we want to build a house," said Adam Sharp, 

> communications director for Sen. Mary Landrieu. "We haven't built the

house

> yet, but we've commissioned the blue print and you don't do that 

> unless

you

> plan to build."

>

> The Mississippi River Gulf Outlet has been a thorny issue for years

because

> it has destroyed marsh and cypress swamps since it was built in 1963. 

> The 76-mile channel was dug as a short cut to New Orleans, but today 

> few oceangoing ships use the channel.

>

> St. Bernard officials blamed the channel for much of the flooding in 

> the parish when Katrina slammed into the state.

>

> "It's the will of congress that Mr. Go be closed, but we can't do that 

> without knowing what the impact will be," Sharp said. "The Corps in 

> six months must present a list of what projects must be authorized to 

> close it and protect the wetlands."

> Mr. Go is used by about 650 deep-draft ships a year.

>

> But salt water brought into the marshes and wakes from cargo ships 

> have destroyed 18,000 acres of land and 1,500 of cypress swamp, 

> according to

the

> U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which dredged it.

>

> "My appreciation is that there will be no more dredging of Mr. Go and 

> the deep draft passage is finished once the silt fills it in," Dufrechou

said.

> In the past the channel has been dredged to 36 feet. Since the Aug. 29 

> hurricane, sections of it are only 23 feet deep, Dufrechou said.

>

> "As far as the channel filling up, that's not going to happen," 

> Dufrechou said. "They've dredged more from there than they dredged to 

> build the

Panama

> Canal. To completely fill it in would be more than a billion dollars."

>

> The ship channel is blamed for eroding one acre of wetlands every 36

hours.

> "Now we've finally got a chance to restore the coast," Dufrechou said.

"With

> it being dredged and used by deep draft ships there was no chance to

restore

> the coast south of New Orleans."