[StBernard] Report joins chorus for closing MR-GO

[Westley Annis]

Report joins chorus for closing MR-GO
Environmental groups share views 
Wednesday, December 06, 2006
By Bob Warren

A consortium of environmental and conservation groups wants the federal
government to plug the controversial Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet shipping
channel and embark on an ambitious program to restore the wetlands that
surround it. 

During a news conference Tuesday in Washington, the groups released a report
saying the MR-GO was a "bad idea when constructed and has become a worse one
every year." The channel, they said, was a major contributor to the levee
failures that swamped St. Bernard Parish and parts of New Orleans during
Hurricane Katrina. 

Scientists and conservationists for years have also blamed the channel,
created as a shortcut between the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico,
for destroying thousands of acres of cypress wetlands in lower St. Bernard
Parish and eliminating a vital cog in the area's natural hurricane defense.
The report said the channel has "impacted" 922 square miles of wetlands. 

The report was written by scientists for several groups and compiled by the
group Environmental Defense. It comes as the Army Corps of Engineers, which
opened the MR-GO in 1963, is completing work on a congressionally mandated
plan to "deauthorize," or close, the channel to oceangoing ships, and
possibly all water traffic. The corps must submit its plan to Congress by
Dec. 15. 

Paul Harrison, coastal Louisiana project manager for Environmental Defense,
said his group and others have pushed Congress to demand that the corps
present a comprehensive plan that not only recommends closing the MR-GO, but
puts the might of the federal government into restoring the wetlands and
shoreline surrounding the channel. 

"Bottom line: We don't want Congress to just think this is a
deauthoritization," said John Lopez, director of the Lake Pontchartrain
Basin Foundation's coastal sustainability program and one of the authors of
the report. "It's also an authoritization" to implement a wetlands-building
restoration. 

Lopez said such a comprehensive plan should include a real closure of the
channel, plugging the hole MR-GO cuts through the Bayou la Loutre ridge and
filling in the channel at several locations between the ridge and Lake
Borgne in a way that directs fresh water from a Mississippi River diversion
near Violet into wetlands east of the channel. The group's plan also calls
for building and planting a buffer in front of the hurricane levee that
shields Chalmette along the west side of the channel. Those recommendations
are similar to proposals in the state Coastal Protection and Restoration
Authority's draft coastal restoration plan unveiled this month. 

"We think a lot can be done for a relatively small amount of money," Lopez
said. 

For instance, plugging the gap at the Bayou la Loutre ridge, which he termed
the most important step, could be done for $30 million to $50 million, he
said. 

Efforts to reach corps officials for comment Tuesday were not successful.
However, the corps has said in the past that it is considering three
alternatives: maintaining a 12-foot-deep, 125-foot-wide shallow-draft
channel; preventing maintenance dredging of the channel and closing it with
an earthen plug at Bayou la Loutre; or halting the dredging of the channel
and letting it fill in naturally over time. 

Louisiana Attorney General Charles Foti and the St. Bernard Parish Council
recently joined a lawsuit filed by New Orleans and St. Bernard residents
asking the court to appoint an independent panel of experts to come up with
a remedy for the "continuing dangerous conditions of the MR-GO." 

In addition to Lopez, others who authored the report released Tuesday,
called "Mister Go Must Go," are John Day of the Louisiana State University
School of the Coast and Environment, Mark Ford of the Coalition to Restore
Coastal Louisiana and Paul Kemp of the LSU Hurricane Center. 

St. Bernard Parish President Henry "Junior" Rodriguez and U.S. Rep. Charlie
Melancon, D-Napoleonville, also attended the news conference. 

"We need to close the MR-GO. Period," Melancon said. 

. . . . . . . 

Bob Warren can be reached at bwarren at timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3363.