[StBernard] Coast Guard fishes out storm debris

Westley Annis westley at da-parish.com
Tue Aug 8 21:36:44 EDT 2006


HOPEDALE - The U.S. Coast Guard, having removed nearly 900 boats from their
watery graves in five southeastern Louisiana parishes since Hurricane
Katrina hit, turned its attention Monday to clearing storm debris from major
canals and bayous in St. Bernard, St. Tammany and Jefferson parishes.

In a matter of hours on Bayou La Loutre in the hurricane-ravaged St. Bernard
fishing community of Hopedale, Coast Guard personnel and FEMA subcontractors
in boats and on the barge "Poseidon" equipped with a backhoe-style cherry
picker plucked everything imaginable from the bayou, including a water
heater and sink.

"You've got everything but the kitchen sink in here. Now you have that,"
said Brian Lincoln, the Coast Guard incident commander for the cleanup
operations, of what turned out to be a white bathroom sink complete with its
fixtures.

Over the next three months, Lincoln said, the Guard and FEMA will be
clearing debris from 27 waterways in St. Bernard, Plaquemines, St. Tammany,
Orleans and Jefferson parishes. The job involves 160 miles of waterways, he
said, noting that some of the waterways are not passable.

"We want to make sure we restore commerce as soon as possible," Lincoln
said.
Crews began working Monday on the Barataria Waterway in Jefferson, the
Oyster Factory Canal in St. Tammany and Bayou La Loutre. Debris is barged to
trucks and taken to state Department of Environmental Quality-approved
staging areas, where it is separated. Hazardous materials also are being
removed from the waterways, such as barrels, containers and paint cans.

"There's a number of cars in the waterway. House debris. Vegetation - trees
and shrubbery. And there are still some vessels," Lincoln said.

An initial assessment performed in March and April determined that there is
probably 34,800 cubic yards of waterway debris in St. Bernard; 21,700 cubic
yards in Orleans; 8,700 cubic yards in Plaquemines; 7,000 cubic yards in
Jefferson; and 2,300 cubic yards in St. Tammany, he said. Those figures do
not include sub-surface debris, which is estimated at 6,500 cubic yards in
those parishes combined. Sonar is being used to locate sub-surface debris.

Bayou La Loutre leads to and beyond the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, which
is blamed for helping funnel a massive storm surge into St. Bernard. The
bayou and its shorelines are littered with twisted and mangled trees, wooden
dock and camp material, metal siding and roofing, and other debris in the
water and in the trees.
A mostly submerged shipping container rests next to the shrimp boat "Young
Guns." In the woods on the marsh side of the bayou, a tractor-trailer
container sits split in two, deposited there by the huge surge.

Along the road side of the bayou, cinder blocks, steps and wooden pilings
are all that remain of homes.

Story originally published in The Advocate




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