[StBernard] MR-GO going: Closure of waterway begins

[Westley Annis]

MR-GO going: Closure of waterway begins
by Bob Warren, The Times-Picayune 
Friday January 30, 2009, 9:29 PM

A contractor on Friday began dumping the rocks that eventually will be piled
high enough to plug the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet shipping channel in
St. Bernard Parish, the Corps of Engineers said.

It is the start of what will be a massive structure: 430,000 tons of rock,
with a base 450 feet wide, tapering to 12 feet wide at the top. The rock
structure will jut 7 feet from the water's surface and be 950 feet long. It
will cover 10 acres of the channel bottom.

"It's a long process; it's going to take awhile, " said Amanda Jones, a
spokeswoman for the Army Corps of Engineers, which last year gave a $13.6
million contract to Pine Bluff Sand and Gravel Co., of Pine Bluff, Ark., to
build the rock barrier across the waterway at Bayou La Loutre in lower St.
Bernard near Hopedale.

The corps has said the barrier should be finished by the middle of this
year's hurricane season.

The closing will end 45 years of navigation on the 60-mile shipping channel
that provided a shortcut from New Orleans to the Gulf of Mexico. Although
the corps contended that the channel, completed in the 1960s, had minimal
impact on Hurricane Katrina's storm surge, MR-GO took the brunt of criticism
for the massive flooding in St. Bernard Parish and part of New Orleans
during the 2005 storm.

Environmentalists also have blamed it for killing off thousands of acres of
cypress wetlands and marsh, vital to helping the area absorb the pounding of
hurricanes.

Some shipping interests and businesses lobbied to keep the channel open, but
the corps in a study after Katrina concluded it would cost more to keep the
waterway open than it brings in and recommended to Congress that it be
closed.

Carlton Dufrechou, executive director of the Lake Pontchartrain Basin
Foundation, flew over the work Friday afternoon and was ecstatic.

"This is a bright doggone day for the coast, " he said. "It's one little
rinky-dink project in the grand scope of things, but this will start to
restore the natural hydrology, the natural plumbing.

"The coast finally has a chance to start healing itself."

Jones, the Corps spokeswoman, said a crane mounted atop a barge began
grabbing rocks piled into other barges and dumping them into the murky
water. "You can't even see anything yet, " she said. "Once it gets dumped it
just goes to the bottom. It'll be awhile before you can see anything out of
the water."

Jones said the channel remains open to navigation for now. She was unsure
when it will be closed.

The channel has not been dredged in recent years, and sustained severe
shoaling during Katrina. Traffic now is limited largely to fishing boats,
barges and oil-industry service craft.

The corps has been working with state and federal agencies to devise a
supplement to the MR-GO closing plan to address restoration of areas
affected by the shipping channel. The plan could include marsh creation,
barrier island building, shoreline protection and freshwater diversions from
the Mississippi River.

. . . . . . .

Bob Warren can be reached at bwarren at timespicayune.com or 504.826.3363.