Mess on the Mississippi
Damage to Coastal Marshes
May Mean Lasting Problems
For Nation's Vital River
By DANIEL MACHALABA in Woodstock, VT.; JEFF D. OPDYKE in Baton Rouge, La.; and KEN WELLS in Houma, La.
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
September 2, 2005
As state and federal officials grappled with the massive human toll wrought by one of the most powerful hurricanes to ravage the U.S. coastline, evidence mounted that the storm also damaged the critical Mississippi River shipping corridor south of New Orleans as well as the remote towns and ecologically sensitive marshes that surround it.
Photographs and first-hand accounts from helicopter pilots, boat captains and engineers working for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration indicate that the main channel of the river remains intact. But the surrounding nub of land around the last 20 miles of the river, known colloquially as the "Crow's Foot," was heavily damaged with much left underwater.
The submersion of the Crow's Foot accelerates the gradual disappearance of Louisiana's coastal land and amplifies fears that the river might ultimately change its course. More than 1,900 square miles of the state have disappeared since the 1930s, according to America's Wetland, a Baton Rouge organization. The wetlands include portions of St. Bernard's and Plaquemines parishes, both of which were hard hit by Katrina.
The center of the hurricane's eye made landfall at the small town of Buras, La. Eyewitnesses say that community -- and a series of others stretched along the river between Empire, La., and the point at which the Mississippi empties into the sea -- were demolished and flooded.
The Coast Guard said the lower Mississippi River is closed to deepwater traffic but open in some areas to shallow-draft tugboats and barges. Nearly 90 vessels waited yesterday to pass through the Port of New Orleans, and more than 100 barges are believed sunk or grounded in the river.
Whether the long-term navigability of the Mississippi and its main entryway for large ocean-going vessels known as the Southwest Pass was significantly compromised won't be fully known for at least several more days.
The pass, normally dredged to be about 45 feet deep, is the conduit for more than 6,000 ocean-going vessels a year headed to the vast complex of docks, shipping terminals, grain-loading facilities and petroleum-processing plants that line the banks of the Mississippi between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, La. If the levees along each side of the river have been seriously breached, then reopening the river channel to large vessels could be delayed indefinitely.
The massive shipping hub, one of the busiest in the world, is key to the flow of commerce-imported petroleum, export grain and a vast array of other types of cargo from rubber to make tires to steel for construction and chemicals. It is here that cargo is transferred between big ships and barges for distribution throughout the extensive Mississippi River system, extending from the Gulf of Mexico to the upper reaches of the Midwest.
How much of the water seen in the area will eventually drain away and recede back into the Gulf -- and how much land remains beneath it -- won't be known for some time. NOAA began the painstaking work Wednesday of surveying the lower Mississippi ship channel for potential obstructions and damage, deploying The Davidson, a former NOAA vessel now under contract to the agency to do survey work.
The roughly 200-foot-long ship anchored at the mouth of the Mississippi River and sent two launches with three-men crews and sonar to study the channel up Southwest Pass. "We are looking for cars, houses, boats, shipping containers, trees, anything blocking the shipping channels," said Lt. Commander Jon Swallow, chief of the operations branch, hydrographic surveys division of NOAA.
[Photos]
Kent Laborde, a NOAA public-affairs officer, said yesterday that "everything on the banks has been decimated, but the main ship channel seems to be functioning." Tim Osborn, a navigation manager for the Eastern Gulf for NOAA, said major obstacles haven't been found yet. But NOAA officials remain worried about the condition further along the channel where aerial surveys show shrimp boats crushed together along the channel at Empire and numerous barges and vessels washed up on the levees.
An executive from one of South Louisiana's numerous oil-field helicopter services who flew over the lower half of the Plaquemines Parish just hours after Katrina spun her way toward New Orleans and southern Mississippi says he saw what appeared to be multiple breaches of the Mississippi River levee -- one possibly 100 to 150 feet long.
At Buras, La., the water tower appears to be toppled and lying on the ground, Mr. Osborn said. "We are seeing so much debris and stranded vessels on the sides of the river, it certainly raises concern that there may be a number of obstructions or wrecked vessels within the river channel itself," Mr. Osborn said. What's more, NOAA has received reports from the Coast Guard about barges broken loose on the river to the north and missing.
Lt. Teresa Aberle from the Coast Guard's salvage group said several vessels are grounded in the river including a partially submerged barge near downtown New Orleans, but that none appear to entirely block the river channel.
Even if the main channel remains clear, damage to the coastal marshes surrounding it -- and any new cuts between the Gulf of Mexico and the channel -- could cause major problems. A large scour hole siphoning river flow out of the Southwest Pass into the Gulf of Mexico raised fears in the 1990s that the main shipping channel could become too shallow for big ships. The Army Corps of Engineers responded in 2003 by dumping millions of cubic yards of dredged material to plug the hole, partially succeeding, and building a dike to minimize the outflow.
Submersion of the area could have dire consequences for New Orleans in future storms. The marshes extending from the city out into the Gulf are a key buffer from powerful winds and waves of a hurricane, and its grasses provide friction to slow down the wind. Were it to wash away, says Richard Keim, assistant professor at the School of Renewable Natural Resources at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, "New Orleans could become a beachfront city."
Brent Barnard, vice president of the Gulf Coast region for Newpark Drilling Fluids, a Houston oil-field services concern, took a client over the coastal area this week in a plane at low altitudes. Mr. Bernard said he saw the Mississippi River levee breached in three places between the Empire, in mid Plaquemines Parish, and Venice. Four hamlets -- Empire, Buras, Triumph and Boothville -- appeared all but demolished. "Along this stretch of the river there were no buildings that we could see that weren't flooded or severely damaged by the wind," Mr. Barnard said. |
