New Mardi Gras Pass could be restricted if oil facility gets OK to rebuild road

A small oil company that lost the only road to its Plaquemines Parish storage facility south of Pointe a la Hache when the Mardi Gras Pass crevasse was formed in early 2012 has asked the Army Corps of Engineers and the state Department of Natural Resources to rebuild the road atop four 6-by-46-foot culverts that would be built into the crevasse. The rest of the now 80-foot-wide watercourse would be dammed at the road location.
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The plan drew objections Thursday from members of the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority-East's coastal restoration committee, which agreed to re-send resolutions opposing an earlier closure plan by the company to state and federal officials.

Committee member John Lopez, who also is executive director of the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation, said a recent survey of the pass found that it is an average 13 feet deep along the lowest point of its channel, which now leads from the Mississippi River to an interior canal and wetlands in the Bohemia Spillway.

The new waterway is about two miles south of Pointe a la Hache and the end of hurricane and river flood levees on the river?s eastern side.

The 12-mile-long Bohemia Spillway was created as a flood-control measure in 1926, a year before the disastrous 1927 flood. The man-made levee along that stretch of the river was removed, creating a lower sill that could be easily overtopped during spring high-water events. The hope was that it would relieve pressure on levees upstream.

In 2011, the Mississippi River had record-breaking flooding along much of its length in the spring and into summer. That forced the Corps of Engineers to open the Bonnet Carre Spillway above New Orleans, the Morganza Floodway above Baton Rouge, and the Birds Point-New Madrid Floodway in Missouri.

Even so, the river was high enough at Bohemia that the spillway was overtopped for months. The water washed out a large section of the roadway running through the spillway, and created a channel that almost cut through to the river.

The river connection was completed by the high river in December 2011 and February 2012, and the pass has continued to be filled with water either flowing from the river into wetlands, or from the wetlands into the river, during this year's unusually low river.

The Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation has urged state officials to adopt the new crevasse as a cheaper alternative to a proposal to build a major diversion of Mississippi River water nearby to rebuild east bank wetlands. "If this is blocked up, we'd better give up the coast and move away," said Carlton Dufrechou, a committee member and executive director of the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway, and a former executive director of the lake foundation. "We have to make the decision whether we want to reconnect the river to the coast, and this is trying to do it naturally."

Lopez said the lake foundation and other organizations plan to request that the corps hold a public hearing on the permit. He pointed out that Sundown is rebuilding a dock at its storage site that could be used to transport oil, but that company officials have said trucks would provide a cheaper transportation alternative.
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Source: http://www.nola.com/environment/index.ssf/2013/01/new_mardi_gras_pass_could_be_r.html

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