[StBernard] Plan aims to sink ships in MR-GO

[Westley Annis]

Plan aims to sink ships in MR-GO
State lawmaker proposes sinking ships in MR-GO 
Thursday, June 22, 2006
By Richard Boyd

State Sen. Walter Boasso, R-Arabi, said at a St. Tammany Parish forum
Wednesday that he is moving forward on a plan to sink as many as 70
oceangoing ships that can be obtained for free to speed the closing the
controversial Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet. 

Using a colored chart, Boasso showed how the sunken ships could be used to
fill in the channel that Congress has told the Army Corps of Engineers to
figure out how to discontinue as a deep-draft waterway. 

"We could sink them on both sides and dredge over them, and then landscape
on top of that, and I think it would be very attractive," he said. He said
he will meet soon with St. Bernard officials in the hopes that they will
throw support behind his plan. 

Boasso was one of four speakers focusing on the closing of the Gulf Outlet
as a vital element to coastal restoration at a public forum sponsored by the
League of Women Voters St. Tammany at the St. Tammany Parish Council
chambers. 

About 35 people attended, most of them long familiar figures in St. Tammany
environmental and growth-control issues. What some had thought would be a
large turnout of St. Bernard residents displaced to St. Tammany by Hurricane
Katrina did not materialize. 

Boasso said closing the channel, which scores of experts have said played a
major role in creating a high-velocity storm surge that led to massive
flooding in St. Bernard, might mean the loss of some of the five companies
located along the Gulf Outlet in St. Bernard. 

"But that is a risk we have to take," he said. 

Carlton Defrechou, executive director of the Lake Pontchartrain Basin
Foundation, said closing the Gulf Outlet is essential to his group's Coastal
Lines of Defense project, which targets 10 habitat restoration projects on
the south shore of the lake. He said critical among them is restoring the
Bayou la Loutre ridge that stretches across St. Bernard wetlands. He said
the Gulf Outlet over the years has contributed to the destruction and
erosion of the vital ridge and that the channel must be closed to begin
restoration. 

Mark Davis, executive director of the Coalition to Restore Coastal
Louisiana, said no meaningful coastal restoration program to bring back
barrier islands and eroded wetlands can begin until the Gulf Outlet is
closed. That was echoed by Aaron Viles of the Gulf Restoration Network. 

Davis distributed a June 2 letter that Gov. Kathleen Blanco wrote to the
corps asking that the Gulf Outlet be closed immediately. 

"My question is how much will it cost, and where is the money and will it
really be closed completely? I have learned that these vessels no longer
being used in commerce are ready to be donated free, and they are in Texas,
Virginia and California," Boasso said. 

"The corps want to spend $107 million to pile some rocks on the banks of the
canal to stop erosion. I don't want rocks; they will in time just wash away.
I say let's bring these abandoned, surplus oceangoing freighters in and sink
them. It will cost about $300,000 to clean them environmentally, and the
corps can sink them, spending some of that money they want to spend on
rocks." he said. 

. . . . . . . 

Richard Boyd can be reached at rboyd at timespicayune.com or (985) 898-4816.