New Orleans - The Natural History

New Orleans is the newest major city of all of North America and the reason I say that five thousand years ago that's not very long remember the pyramids were but to come by a thousand years ago is the Gulf of Mexico there was no land here down at the mouth of River which is only six hundred years old think about that it was probably have buildings over in Europe that are old and then the newest land in Louisiana it's called south pass it's a unique river system on the North American continent there's no other river system that has built the amount of land and ecosystem as Mississippi River South Louisiana it's been said is not so much place as it is process there been some massive massive changes in climate and weather through history you've had ice ages when continuous winter happened all the way down into where the United States is not thousands of years ago the glacier started to melt and when they did the water had to go somewhere and they formed a river which we call the Mississippi River the topsoil of all of these states and parts of Canada emptied into the bowels of the Mississippi River the river starts to fill in its valley and then it gets to the coast then it starts building land out into the Gulf of Mexico so the river is building land building land building land the Mississippi River builds a Delta that sticks out into the Gulf of Mexico on the south side of the United States even though this place looks timeless it is the youngest land in the United States some of the youngest land in the world none of the land we live on it's more than a few thousand years old Delta's began to farm in coastal Louisiana the bottom topography of the sea was right the amount of sediment coming down a lot of things fell into place so that a Delta could begin to form it's a large chunk of the continent you know any river that's going to do pause itself is going to be constantly building up you land but it's also going to be eating it away it's land that is in constant change the Mississippi River has shifted a number of times during geologic time and river systems like the Mississippi they'll come down one channel and then every year they flood to make the natural levee and then after a while they shift because they're trying to find the fastest route to the sea as you spring floods come in and the water spreads out the velocity of the water slows down it cannot support the silk that it has in it and it drops it out over the land and rebuilds the left the heavy things like sand fall out on the bank and then the next heaviest fall out next and finally it carries some of the silts and Clay's eight or ten or twenty miles away this whole portion that forms the Mississippi Delta which really isn't just the mouse's of the river but just a wide area in which New Orleans is built and extends about midway between New Orleans and Lafayette maybe fifteen hundred years ago the Mississippi River travel through what is now the city of New Orleans when it moved to where it is today it left the Metairie Ridge in the Gentilly Raisin Gentilly Road some of its natural some of it's actually dredged and built up before the causeway that was the route that you would take to go from the North Shore to the city monkey hill used to be which I think was some WPA thing out of the 30s I'm not sure they were digging out lagoon in ottoman park and they piled up some mud and that became so-called monkey hill the highest elevation in the city which I think was like I don't know 31 feet or something a great deal of our areas below sea level 60 to 70 percent of the city is below sea level there is along the river are pretty much above sea level in South Louisiana the high ground is next to the river unlike anyplace else in the country where you go down to the river in Louisiana we have to first go up and then down the river the most stable parts of the city tend to be the older parts of the city because that's where the high ground was in New Orleans the natural levees probably were ten feet high right next to the river and then they progressively sloped away from the high ground which is basically the French Quarter in just a matter of tens of blocks the land tapered off such that there was a marsh between the French Quarter and the lake the lowest spot in all the city of New Orleans is in the eastern section of city it's a eight feet below sea level it's on Bullitt and Lake Forest Boulevard if the Mississippi River you know overflowed its banks we're gonna have almost 30 feet of water in the city of New Orleans why would anybody want to build a city where the wall is is below sea level when they gave me they found alligators snakes and mosquitoes no it wasn't put here for the weather it's just a very good intersection between various points people were drawn to Delta's because of the abundant resources and because it was easy to get around deltaic region's transportation was fairly easy in the old days the Indians used to come down to Mississippi River and cross I use or either they would portage their canoe over the dry land between Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi River you could take a canoe down by your scent John and then you could take this portage and get into the Mississippi River system it's less than a mile to actually have to you know to carry the canoes the Indians recognized that this was the shortest route what they would do is come over across the lake and it'd go out into the bayous and get what they call Ranger Kanata it was shellfish they would collect that of those cases of eaten oysters going out and hunting raccoon possum various things like that lots of different types of fish they talked about Louisiana being at the spa Westen's paradise what was a sportsman's paradise for the Indians as well the Native Americans were smart about it they didn't live in New Orleans in the summertime they were here fall in winter and in spring they went back upriver when the French were here they were talking with the Native Americans and they wanted to settle where there was a natural trade route Bienville at a number of Native American guides he also a member of Native Americans who wanted to kill him but he had a number of guides who showed him the portage through Bayou st. John why you st. John goes into Lake Pontchartrain Lake Pontchartrain goes into the Gulf of Mexico the major transportation route at that particular time was going along the Gulf Coast through the back Lakes into Lake Pontchartrain it's much easier for a sailing ship to come through the Lake Pontchartrain system sailing and you know tacking back and forth across the lake that tried to come up the Mississippi River 2/3 of North America empty into the Mississippi River so when it comes down we had what we call New Orleans the economic valve was put here because of the fact that it was a great transportation and commerce site there was a lot of access and ability to transport goods and people a lot of the peoples in New Orleans at least originally were related to either shipping or fishing there was method in the madness I don't know if they ever expected it to remain here all that long but there was certainly method behind placing New Orleans at this particular location when New Orleans was settled in 1718 there were no levees no lovers at all of course the city was much smaller and much more primitive and everything but it was also more susceptible any who have a problems they had river flooding and they had water that could come from the lake south of them anywhere in the early days the river was a real serious problem like say the very first year that New Orleans was here we flooded 100% and for the next three or four years we flooded until they said we got to do something so they decided they would start building levees they got it up to about eighty nine feet high and one flood washed it out completely suddenly said no we got to really do something that to keep an out of the city of New Orleans and that's when they really put a full effort into it and the first levees of any substance in North America were built right here in New Orleans it's a pretty simple technology it just consists of bringing the city with higher and higher levels as the water increases in order to protect the other parts of the state the French decided that they would give land to people and it was so many are pent which is a French foot it was also your job to maintain the levee they would grant a landowner so many often so long the river and so many orphans back normally what would you would see is what they call the forty often line and you should leave that towards the forty of it you started getting it to support the area the city is uh salsa like in shape and it's surrounded by flood walls if you look at a geologic a topo map of the city New Orleans is a bold we levied all the way around to try to keep that that water out if it ever gets over the levees it's going to be hard to get out because the levees then working against use if during a high water event if those should ever fail then the city would be inundated greatest disaster in the history of the United States was the 1927 flood they were literally 20 million people in the North America in the United States were displaced by the water the Mississippi River in the state of Louisiana was 30 miles wide the federal government finally says we can't have this happen again it's hurting the economy as well as the people so they decided to give one group control of it the US Corps of Engineers Congress mandated the Corps of Engineers to come in here and build a levee system that would allow the development coastal Louisiana in a way that had never been seen before the decision was made we're never going to let this River flood people this way again this country made a decision to build a levee system that would be impregnable at least that was the belief and it's largely worked we have not flooded from Mississippi River since then a very dynamic river created all these wetlands as it switched its Delta around the southern part of Louisiana and now we've tried to fix it in one place basically in order to live here we moved to this spot on the Mississippi and then we decided we needed to maintain navigation in a very dynamic River so we've maintained channels River brought down flooding we built up levees or levees cut off flow to the marshes if we did not control the Mississippi River the Corps of Engineers that not control it it would move back where once went that was the chapel a basin the natural course of the river is shipped back that way and build that area which is what it's done over hundreds and hundreds of years the old river structure is preventing that and only letting about thirty percent of the water go down the Atchafalaya and the rest to go down the Mississippi River it's the epitome of battle of man over nature the original drainage attempts came about is the need to move water not vast amounts of water because those days New Orleans was French Quarter and the swamps from the very beginning Street gutters were constructed in New Orleans and early maps show each square of the French Quarter surrounded by a little gutter and then little wooden bridges by the 1800s as the city started to expand not only with the occupants of the city dig in drainage ditches but they realized they need more water out the canals were put in to collect the 60 odd inches of rain that the city gets all the time canal certainly play a major role fairly early on just because of drainage problems through the 19th century the city's drainage system remained primarily canals and Street gutters these were often in choked with mud and garbage and whatever else would up in the streets before the civil war series of pumps were constructed along the Metairie Ridge these were really very very rudimentary they used a paddle wheel device pretty much the same as you find on the paddle wheel boat it was about 30 feet in diameter and about 18 foot one so it would lift the water and move it out into the swampy area the bad part of that is that when you had more rain it overflows and brings it back in which was a terrible situation New Orleans was filled with stagnant water it was very hard to get it out and by the 1870s and 1880s the city had really reached the point where it could not expand very much beyond its urban limits as the city grew and more people moved in we had to drain more and more the area we have our problems with the natural enemies like mosquitos and if you couldn't dry out the land that swamp would have prevailed then no thought what kind of diseases you'd have soon after the 1870 a yellow fever epidemic there was a growing knowledge about sanitation in cities and was felt in New Orleans because of its very very poor drainage system was one of the sickest cities in the United States and it was it had a very high death rate the past just in a sheer matter of Health this has always been like a very unhealthy place at the end of the 1890s if the life expectancy in Boston was 54 years well here it might have been like 38 years those are the areas that were all swampy and they figured the best thing to do from a public health standpoint is to dream it wasn't until they're able develop efficient pumping systems that they could actually expand the city out basically the drainage in New Orleans is totally artificial now as time passed the need developed for most sophisticated pumping systems the father of the New Orleans drainage system is Albert Baldwin wood he was a graduate Tulane University of mechanical and electrical engineer in a very brilliant man and he is responsible for designing our drainage system and each pumps in 1897 he designed and built the biggest drainage pumps anywhere in the world 14 feet in diameter they were revolutionary there was nothing like them on earth even today they're quite formidable in their ability to drain the city except for minor modifications they're still the same original pumps that are pumping today that hump in the early 1900s mr. Albert Baldwin would also design them because he knew that the city of New Orleans being below sea level if it doesn't marine for a month we still have to drain the water because we got the seepage from the river we got the lake we got the marshes the metropolitan area is is virtually surrounded by levees it creates a requirement that every drop of rain that falls within that levee system has to be pumped out water is pumped out of the city by the millions of gallons a day even when it's not raining just to keep the city dry by necessity all of the drainage stations were placed at the lowest points in the city because the only way to get the water to the stations is by gravity when it rains water flows onto the street from the street into catch basins large pipe lines then bring it to covered canals or open canals we have many open canals of the city and from the canal it comes to the suction basin of the wet well of the pumping station there the pumps aided by a vacuum system suck water into the pump and by means of an internal propeller water is propelled from the pump discharged into either another canal which then goes to another drainage station or ultimately to the lake the 17th Street canal which separates the city of New Orleans from Jefferson Parish for many many years was the highest capacity pumping station anywhere in the world pumps I think up which a 10,000 cubic feet per second capacity into that canal the canal is levied on both sides down to the pump stations so that you can pump into the canal and and during a storm event it keeps the water out approximately 19 major drainage pump stations some located on the lakefront Lake Pontchartrain many of them located in the inner city there's been an ongoing drainage pumping construction program to keep pace with the needs of the city the pumping stations are still currently being improved upon pump drainage is a way of life for us the city in New Orleans many many years ago before it was formed was a rural area or swampy area and it had an entirely different microclimate but as we build and put highways down pavement down subdivisions buildings all of this other thing we create what's called a heat island I know about Arizona and the temperatures in Arizona and in lower California now there is no heat ain't seen nothing till I get here there's no heat like this see and it's almost a cliche but yeah it is the humidity stupid we have the best weather in the world they were very short winter season last year was on a Wednesday in the afternoon people get excited about whether there's earth warming and they tend to judge changes in weather by what's happening at the moment I happened last year but in truth you're talking about swings in climate temperature tremendous swings anytime you have a glacial period the sea levels going to drop right now they're melting so the sea levels coming up a very subtle change in temperature or in sea level can cause astronomical consequences the big concern is maybe the use of fossilized fuels is making this happen faster than it normally does global warming is is very dangerous for Louisiana if you get increases in water level six inches 12 inches it completely alters the ecosystem that the plants are in you're going to have much more salt water in it'll start killing off the brackish and the freshwater marsh so it's going to be devastating to the whole coast of Louisiana there's no high land between us and ago you could wind up with New Orleans being almost an island if it was there at all the amount of sea level rise that is projected associated with global warming is relatively small compared to a fairly large amount of rodents that we already have much of the city has shrunk in elevation because of the dewatering of the city water table gets lower the ground shrinks and so the topography is such that it follows with the dewatering process the main reason the city is sinking is because of the levees I mean it's it's a real double-edged sword we don't flood when the river rises anymore but on the flip side when the river did overflow the banks and deposit itself so it was this sort of natural process of the ground sinking as it sort of naturally does but then more land was deposited on top of it and of course we don't have that read deposition of soil anymore the types of soil that were brought down by Mississippi River Compact over time and you know when you have a river flooding every year you get a fresh layer of sediment on top so you don't sink as much but you know we've been cut off from the Mississippi River for flooding wise 150 years so you know the soils just keep compacting and compacting and going down and that's the same thing that's happening in coastal wetland marshes where they don't have the sediment coming back in they're compacting down so they get to be a point where the type of vegetation cannot live because of the soils too far down so it comes over the water what happens when you drain one of these areas and you take out the water and a soil that is normally wet becomes dry not only do you take out the water and lose some volume that organic matter starts to decompose as the city has grown out to Lake Pontchartrain and out into the surrounding swamps into the surrounding levees that water isn't being absorbed by the soil it's flowing out as being pumped out of the city by the drainage system it's flooding into canals and somehow are they're being moved out of the city or piling up in the city but it's not sinking back into the the ground to keep that spongy soil high many of the houses particularly in New Orleans are not a pile founded they're just settled piers and each pier as the ground settles and then you get that differential settlement where one sells more than the other and that starts racking the house and causing problems we're number two in the nation with potholes because you have a flood you don't get a uniform sediment load across everything you have different pockets different sands different types of settlements drop out different places so you have this you know different bands and as they can pack that could pack the different rates the area that we've been building subdivisions in for the last you know 40 years there was there was a reason nobody lived there before soils weren't suitable some of those neighborhoods if you drive them today you will see the houses tilting the streets buckling pipes breaking I think the major threat to us is threat by hurricane the worst hit we've ever had was with Hurricane Betsy my wife was here for Betsy she thought she was going to die I mean it was a terrifying experience when we had of course the report from there omits that you know was coming our way I told my kids and my wife I said you must get the things that you would like to have and keep because I want to put them in the Attic certainly we would glue ourselves to television and watch Nash robbers get his crayon out with his chalkboard and then go through the analysis of where it's gonna get Betsy was an interesting storm in that way it was set up there was a high pressure system right over the southeast part of the US and there was another high pressure system over Bermuda and between these two high pressure systems was a trough thought of a ditch between the two hills of pressure and it looked very much like the storm was going to follow that weakness that trough that cracking between the two highs and go on up the East Coast we had just finished the construction of our easternmost station which is on the levy and discharges into the intercostal waterway however we didn't have any fuel we had fuel tanks in place they will below ground it made very little progress started slowing down and I couldn't figure out why I was slowing down at first and all of a sudden it stopped and it made a loop then I realized what was going on the two highs and started to bridge across to block the trough was a solid high pressure system from out an oval Atlantic to over Louisiana but couldn't go up north the only thing he do is come West so I knew it was going to cross Florida and come into the Gulf I remember the day the storm hit it was actually predicted to go into Galveston the map on the front page of the newspaper this little dotted lines where I was going to go and buy you know noontime the wind was already beginning to pick up and really start howling the way the up a high pressure system was and the winds aloft walk they just came West to got almost to the mouth of Mississippi River that it ended when it heard he hit it reached 11 just east station and water from canal load into Long's it blew the roof off my house we were without electricity water or anything for days it was my task to get the station running when I got to the railroad tracks all I can see with water there was an aluminum skiff an outboard motor you know in good spirits I said well I'm going to comedy R this in the name of the water boy jumped in the boat cranked it up and went point the point got to the station and the water was within a couple of feet of the station floor the engines were idle nobody there but me I had a radio with me so I called back and I told my said look there's nothing to do here and it will just stay there anyhow we'll get you some fuel so within a couple of hours up the intercostal waterway comes an army duck with National Guard's a 55-gallon drums a decent fuel I cut some cruises stuck it in the drums and started operating the pumps and I pumped water for three days straight and water never went down about a half inch they had known that the levee had been breached but just keep pumping anyhow because it's a good faith effort I do remember we did not have electricity in my neighborhood for seven days Power had been knocked out it was the people in the low-lying areas that really sustained damage it hugely destroyed the coast it was by the way the first billion-dollar storm in North America I know after Betsy just reading out of town newspapers there were many cities reporting that New Orleans was no more it was an obituary to New Orleans I think was on the front page of the Manchester Guardian the Gulf Coast region is unique in the world in the number of really catastrophic tropical storms that hit the region every year we get the scenario that the hurricane of some particular storm event here at the women of the nature at least on the Hurricanes we know they're out there we have a pretty good idea whether they're coming our way or not scientists are constantly trying to get a handle on any information that will help them predict these storms and the best way to find out is to go back and look at what happened under certain synoptic situations everything I could find most of it is based on logs of vessels that were in the port here at the time or the Jesuits priests kept records of things and of course the early newspapers a periodical would always cover the storm because they were big event today I think they're just more people who are more familiar with the workings of the hurricane we have a much greater idea of where they're going to go should the hurricane approach at the right angle the water in the lake could actually be pushed back through the pumps into the canals in the city in order to prevent this most of the stations have been retrofitted with gates so you got a problem if the lake gets too high you're going to have one agency the Corps of Engineers closing the gates and you'll have the water board with the need to pump to go to the lake with nowhere to pump to so that has to be coordinated very closely most of hurricanes come from June through October November well those are the times when the river is at its lowest you don't have the big flooding caused by the river if you had a coincidence where a strong came up towards the mouth of the river when the river was that flood you could top the levees Hurricane George was the only a class-2 hurricane but it just happened to hit under the right wind conditions in the right tide conditions such that it had pretty dramatic effects these camps have been here for decades at whether a major hurricane of 1947 Hurricane Betsy 1965 Hurricane Camille 1969 much larger hurricanes the hurricane George in 1998 his camps were destroyed we should be very cautious about thinking the last hurricane is anything like the next one we are not the same city we were when Hurricane Betsy came ashore there's just so much you can do to protect an engineering place and that's why I think New Orleanians are so afraid of hurricanes because a direct hit would take the city out I mean the estimates are that a direct hit on you orleans would put us under water at some level or other for six months at least hurricane threat to New Orleans comes from light post rain over topping the levee but put 10 20 feet of water possibly 30 feet of water in the city once the water comes over the levee and if the wind continued long enough New Orleans will fill up to the top of the levee New Orleans is probably more vulnerable than any other urban center certainly in the United States and probably more vulnerable than any other city in the world the city's at risk and the new numbers are 100,000 dead city government beat inoperable for 3 to 6 months the city has already negotiated with governments on the Northshore to relocate city government until the city is repaired the Red Cross announced we're not opening any hurricane evacuation shelters in south Louisiana those are places you should not evacuate to those are places you should evacuate from I remember that announcement the reaction and a lot of the local communities around here was how dare they Red Cross basically said we'll come down and help you afterwards but when you're not going to put our people at risk and we're not going to encourage people to stop halfway and tuitions people going to have to cooperate in doing early evacuation and just decide that that's one of the costs of living in New Orleans just take a little trip and go somewhere else if you wait too late it's too late they'll take it upon themselves to have evacuation plans if a storm is headed toward New Orleans that they have a plan on getting themselves and their family out of the city unbelievably until about three years ago there was no real coordinated evacuation plan they didn't plan to change the traffic patterns it's still going to be two lanes on each interstate out for the most part now it's to turn almost all the roads going outside of town into one-way roads half you know people start evacuating any place you'd go you're going to put yourself in some sort of danger because you don't know what sort of rising what are you going to have surrounding you interstate ten going in either direction out of the city getting up to interstate 59 and any of the other interstates leading out of the city you're going to go over an awful lot of water to get there and you know you're supposed to evacuate what's at 48 72 hours ahead of a storm hitting most people have to work they can't go in and tell their boss I'm evacuating they are now going to try to tell people I think five days in advance whether you should evacuate realization is three days it's not enough time what people do it remains to be seen but I do think that finally realizing that New Orleans had become increasingly vulnerable and it's been more than a generation since New Orleans has been hit by hurricane a lots changed 25 and 30 years and how much wetland has been lost since Hurricane Betsy hit so how much is hurricane protection been reduced and most people don't realize that the wetlands that have been lost were the buffer against hurricanes and so if you cut that in half then your protection against hurricanes is half what it was when there was a hurricane Betsy the wetlands provide an important facet to our coastal protection system the storm makes landfall it loses its energy source it needs water and it needs warm air to fuel it the marsh itself would provide friction which would slow down wind absorb tidal surge and again without the warm water to fuel the storm it starts to die they figured that for every 2.7 miles of marsh that you had in front of you you'd knock down storm surge by 1 foot New Orleans isn't right on the coast we're roughly 60 miles from the mountain river here when you had 60 miles of swamps and marshes storm to reach you had to go over something it has less and less to go over now it's very important that we keep those wetlands there for many many reasons but hurricane protection is a very important with this whole change of the ecosystem down here we're getting less vegetation for the worse to live in less Marsh landfill different types of species to nest and breed so we've seen a real impact there because of all of that nutrient here over thousands and thousands of years you've had this Mississippi River Flyway developed where birds that are living down in Central America will come through this area into the North America and then spread out to go up and nest and lay their eggs and then at the end of the year after they've hatched all their babies and fledged them and they all fly back through this area head and south Mississippi Flyway provides wintering habitat for between 50 and 70 percent of the ducks and geese that live in North America someone stay here all winter and some of them stop here of Ireland and go down the coast to Mexico we'll go across the go petrochemical plants in Louisiana discharge more into a environment than other states of the US if you have all these different petrochemicals in the Mississippi River and you start diverting out into the marsh and wetlands what kind of impacts is going to have on the ecosystem out there and we don't know the brown pelicans the state bird all died because we use DDT as a pesticide this that came down the river it would get into the fish and then the pelicans ate the fish and then when they laid eggs so eggs would just have a thin shell then when the mother tried to sit on them to keep them warm she'd break up and so all the pelicans in Louisiana died from the pesticides that came down the river eventually this country banned BBT but it took a while work and out of the ecosystem and then we brought in pelicans from Florida it took a couple of tries that now they're all over the state it's wonderful to see them again the coastal wetlands of Louisiana provide 40% of nation's fisheries Louisiana wetlands are so productive that it's comparable to the production of the Atlantic seaboard marshes are nursery for baby fish shrimp crabs etc without the marshes these animals wouldn't be here actually 95% of all marine life on the whole Gulf of Mexico spend part of their lifetime in the Louisiana Marsh is the grass dies it first breaks up into pieces of grass that some animals eat eventually decays into nutrients that causes other grass to grow and then big crustaceans eat the smaller ones bigger fish eat those and eventually you have a whole food web in the marsh that is extremely rich or as the Gulf just has a lot of the top predators our heritage revolves around those wetlands and the seafood and the crawfish and the fishing and the recreation activities that occur in those wetlands those wetlands go away then in essence who we are is changed we're not the same people were not the same state we're not the same environment we definitely have less land now than we did just ten years ago five years ago millions of acres less we had a hundred years ago every year I hear something saying well we lost another 300 yards of shoreline you know I don't know how many years you can go before it starts the optimum shape on a map the best way to measure your land loss or your land presence is with the satellite images that has been very dramatic we have satellite images of the mouth of the Mississippi River fence and if you were to look at 120 years ago and look at it today 50% of the land is gone it was there 20 years ago between 1932 and 1990 over six hundred ninety thousand acres of wetlands around New Orleans disappeared as over a thousand square miles 40% of the wetlands in the United States occurred in Louisiana 80% of the loss occurs here we built the levees around New Orleans we stopped the flooding the flooding had nourished its landscape flooding adds an inch it sinks an inch it was like a dynamic equilibrium man's footprint on the environment pretty much put the natural system out of balance New Orleans has always been something of a temporary bargain every time we build levees higher pump more areas cut more swamps we find that we've created a new situation after cope with the price we pay for keeping this river in this channel is it never gets back out into its floodplain it does not replenish the swamps and marshes they subside erode they disappear people did not really foresee the extent of the wetlands loss I believe maybe 40 50 years ago and now it's become real apparent what that will ultimately mean just allowing 25 square miles of marsh to just disappear and turn into open Gulf waters the rate at which we're losing our wetlands is absolutely horrendous it's certainly not a new process part of it is sort of just a natural geologic process the shoreline especially in marshy areas subsides in erodes I think we've accelerated that process in any number of those recreational vehicles accelerate that process nutrient for instance in some areas these are these rats that are over the yeah really quite large rats that actually go out and eat the marsh the McElhenney is introduced i know six nutria from argentina because they thought they would eat the water hyacinth water hyacinth was becoming a big problem blocking up waterways and things like that and by the time they got to New Orleans they were 30 odd of them because they breed so rapidly and then in some hurricane or something they escaped and now they're all over the place much more destructive on us grasp as muskrat eat the grass where is the nutria dig for the roots and so I must ask I'd like a long more crops talk Nebraska's new tree just kills the price the part Wildlife and Fisheries have done studies that show they have significant impact 17% of the oil and 25% of gas this nation uses it produces goes through the Louisiana waters against oil and gas canals allowed saltwater to come in and many of the marshes in Louisiana or brackish water marshes and cannot tolerate certain salt levels once the salt water comes up into these marshlands it's so much faster killer than freshwater in coastal Louisiana we like to see a good balance of freshwater marsh followed by intermediate Marsh brackish Marsh and salt marsh and that's what you need to maintain the balance of the ecosystem so that all the critters out there and all the plants can interact in a healthy way it's not so much that nutria or muskrats or oil field canals or levees on the Mississippi River any one of those individually is really the problem all created a situation right now that has south Louisiana in the state of collapse and so go south Louisiana so Gosney once we finally come to the realization you can't muscle the system around mark twain wouldn't have been surprised to know that if you read life on the Mississippi he talks about the hubris of trying to muscle Mississippi River it's taken us a while to live the wisdom of Mark Twain and the irony is that most of the things that we now recognize as the biggest contributors to the problem or at the time sold as the keys to prosperity Louisa has faced with this huge environmental challenges this huge infrastructure public safety challenges and some require partnerships between local government state government and federal government because no one has enough money to do everything that we want to do we have the prioritize and find the best path with the most practical solution to preserving New Orleans one fella had the idea and he was partially successful taking old automobile tires and laying the tires out the theory being the water would wash sand over the tire and it would fill up the cavity and repeated placement of tires would ultimately build up some land mass every year is a big drive around the city to collect Christmas trees you know we actually started the Christmas tree program educated a lot of people that there is a marsh out there and it's helped keep a lot of trees out of landfills for a while but anybody who thinks you're going to save this place Christmas trees or similar band-aid projects is kidding themselves we really have to use the river it's the biggest river in the United States it's the biggest river in North America it's the biggest resource we have we have small problems and we can deal with small problems with small solutions but if we're going to get our arms around the big problem we have to use the biggest resource we have and that's the river we want to create a sustainable ecosystem we have developed several techniques for doing it one of the most effective is the river diversion we're going to make strategically placed very controllable gaps in the levees and let the water out into the marshes guide it out to where we need it and let it really restore the health and vigor back to those marshes the idea is again to put the river at least functionally back to some degree where it had been 100 years before some people are going to be hurt economically now those people are going to fight the versions so the way we're going to get over this is by simply going in and say we're going to use state money to compensate you diversions for the most part of bringing fresh water into the wetlands but they actually do very little to bring sediment in and it's the sediment that's really needed to counterbalance the natural subsidence that takes place on the Delta what we need are inexpensive ways to dredge material from the river from the offshore and bring that material into the wetlands to build up the elevation of the wetlands the state is pressing the Corps to use the materials they dredge out of the Mississippi River and channels to in fact benefit the wetlands go out and start placing it in areas where you can then have natural growth we just started farming Marsh recently these bays that were solid water back in the 1930s and now they're shallow plant salt Marshall on them those plants baffle the wave energy and whatever sediment is in the water falls out and the land comes back again we're developing new plants that grow faster and stronger we went into areas of high stress and picked plants and grew them in greenhouse and basically clone them we have field tested them it's been hugely successful we need to restore the barrier arteries we're talking about dredging sand from offshore to raise the elevation of the islands and extend the width of the islands it's going to take a long long time and a lot of work and a lot of money we've neglected that area for so long now people were getting to realized what a precious program that is to restore that land Louisiana just has to get smart about the way it starts taking care of its resources Louisiana can't do it alone we need the help of the federal government but it's so hard to get Congress to take action on something like this and Louisiana doesn't have a lot of political power all we have is the appeal to the National sense to save the coach if everybody in the state legislature received four or five letters that's all they'd be talking about they would get so focused on coastal issues they're not getting that mandate from the electorate educating the public and officials on how to deal with these situations is one very important aspect we'll begin in a national awareness program because this is a national treasure this is the largest wetland by far there's a lot of money in Washington it just depends on what their priorities are what we've got to do is not go try to create new money we've got to go try to create new priorities when you now hear you know businesses your bankers insurance companies saying a naturally sustainable coast is the only way for us to survive you know that the light bulbs gone on somewhere and we just hope it's not too late when we talk about conserving coastal Louisiana is not that we're going to conserve coastal Louisiana the way it is today we're going to conserve a way of life the ambience the music the food the manner of the people all of these great things that that people seem to love about coastal Louisiana are things that can be concerned we are survivors people of New Orleans will be here thousands of years from now you

Channel: TerrebonneParish

Views: 176,272

Rating: 4.8440466 out of 5

Keywords: New Orleans, wetlands, coastal erosion, delta, louisiana, walter williams, mt. bill, oil canals

Id: ROXcAO9znIk

Length: 50min 34sec (3034 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 05 2012