After oil spill, Alabama, Mississippi landowners paid to create artificial marshes

By George Altman, Press-Register
Monday, October 11, 2010

WASHINGTON — Alabama and Mississippi are paying landowners $6.75 million in total to create artificial marshes, typically by flooding farm fields, for birds deprived of natural marshland by the oil spill, according to government information.

Top conservation officials in both states said that the decision to launch the federal program, dubbed the Migratory Bird Habitat Initiative, was made in the early stages of the spill, when no one knew how much oil would gush or for how long.

Although the surface of Gulf waters and shores appears to have escaped a worst-case scenario, they say the program is still doing good.

“Had we done nothing and then the worst would have happened, where would we be?” said Alabama State Conservationist William Puckett. …

Homer Wilkes, state conservationist for Mississippi, said that the “ounce of prevention” represented by the program is far better than the “pound of cure” that would have been required had birds been limited to oiled marshes. …

Puckett said that regardless of the program’s initial spill-related mission, new places for migratory birds to rest are beneficial. “The positive is, we did create thousands and thousands of acres of additional bird habitat,” he said. …

After oil spill, Alabama, Mississippi landowners paid to create artificial marshes

Technorati Tags: wetland,oil spill,oil production,environmental restoration,bird decline,agriculture

Louisiana begins wetland repair with Mississippi River sediment

BELLE CHASSE, Louisiana, April 14, 2009 (ENS) - The first project in state history designed to mine sediments from the Mississippi River and transport them by pipeline to rebuild eroding coastal wetlands was announced today by Governor Bobby Jindal.

The $28.3 million project, known as The Mississippi River Sediment Delivery System at Bayou Dupont, will build and restore nearly 500 acres of marsh in Lower Jefferson and Plaquemines parishes using sediment from the Mississippi River.

Governor Jindal said, "The Bayou Dupont Project breaks new ground for coastal restoration in our state because it is the first time we have carried out a project to transport sediments from the Mississippi River through a pipeline to build wetlands outside the river's levees."

"This project is a great example of the ways the state and Environmental Protection Agency are pushing to use available sediments in the Mississippi River to build land rather than dredging them and dumping them in a wasteful way," Jindal said. "The path forward in rebuilding our coast is capturing and using sediment transported in our waterways to rebuild and strengthen our coasts."

The wetlands being restored have been destroyed by hurricanes and saltwater intrusion.

Louisiana has about 40 percent of the nation's wetlands and experiences 90 percent of the coastal wetlands loss in the entire lower 48 states.

The state is losing 25 to 35 square miles of wetlands each year, nearly a football field every 30 minutes. The highest rates of loss are occurring in the Barataria and Terrebonne basins at a rate of 10 and 11 square miles per year. The Barataria basin is located immediately south of New Orleans, with the Terrebonne basin located further south and west.  …

Louisiana Begins Wetland Repair with Mississippi River Sediment

Technorati Tags: wetland