Gulf Outlet Unlikely to Close

But some plans seek to add storm gates

Monday, April 24, 2006
By Matthew Brown
New Orleans - West Bank bureau
Reprinted from: The Times-Picayune

There are plenty of reasons offered to get rid of the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet, the shipping channel carved through wetlands in St. Bernard Parish as a shortcut to the Gulf of Mexico.

Over the past four decades, salt water rushing through the 76-mile waterway has killed off the marshes that lined its banks, allowing the wakes of passing ships to chew away the region's wetland storm buffer at the rate of up to 30 feet per year. After Hurricane Betsy in 1965 and again after Katrina, the Gulf Outlet, or MR-GO, was blamed for amplifying storm surges that killed hundreds of people in St. Bernard Parish, the 9th Ward and eastern New Orleans. And before Katrina shoaled up the outer reaches of the channel, making it inaccessible to deep-draft ships, maritime traffic already had sharply declined in recent years.

Yet from the moment the first dredge cut into the marshes east of New Orleans to excavate the MR-GO in 1958, there has been scant possibility of turning back. As badly as many residents in St. Bernard and New Orleans would like to see it vanish, the channel likely will remain a scar across southeast Louisiana for years to come, according to federal officials, scientists and fishers who use the channel or have grappled with its effects.

"The channel is a disaster, and it has been since it was built. But now we're stuck with it, so you just have to deal with what you've got," said John Koerner III, a New Orleans businessman who was chairman of the flood protection subcommittee for Mayor Ray Nagin's Bring New Orleans Back Commission.

Almost all proposals to close the MR-GO -- and there are many -- actually would keep the channel open in some fashion. Several proposals would add gates to control storm surges. Others involve restoration projects to shore up the waterway's banks, and the reduction of the channel's 40-foot depth to anywhere from 12 to 28 feet. But the MR-GO, originally 650 feet across and now as wide as 2,000 feet in some stretches, still would be there. Filling it in and turning the clock back to 1957 is not considered a viable option.

In November, Congress prohibited the Army Corps of Engineers from resuming dredging of the channel until a decision is made on whether it will remain forever closed to deep-draft vessels. Over the past 20 years, dredging costs have averaged more than $16 million annually and totaled $322 million.

For now, the corps, which built and maintains the channel, has requested $350 million for a pair of navigable floodgates that could be closed when major storms threaten the region. One would be at the Paris Road bridge along Interstate 510 north of Chalmette, the other at the Seabrook Bridge near Lakefront Airport, at the back end of the Industrial Canal where water flowing through the MR-GO enters Lake Pontchartrain.

The floodgate at the Paris Road Bridge would be at least 36 feet deep, said the corps' Al Naomi, leaving unsettled the question of whether the channel should be shallower. Naomi said that depth is needed to accommodate operations to the east of the bridge along the Michoud Canal, but would not preclude a shallower MR-GO in the future.

The corps has said levees near the floodgates will be raised to handle any added stress caused if storm surges get bottled up against the gates. No particulars have been offered, and St. Bernard officials fear their parish could get swamped again if the floodgates are built and the levees don't hold.

A spokesman for Parish President Henry "Junior" Rodriguez said Sunday that he hoped more details of the corps' plan would be revealed today, when agency officials are scheduled to testify before the Louisiana House Transportation Committee.

Rodriguez has come under criticism in St. Bernard for earlier endorsing maintaining the MR-GO as a 28-feet deep channel. That would allow most ocean-going ships to continue using it.

Spokesman Charles Reppel said Rodriguez is not fully committed to that depth and wants to hear the corps' recommendation.

"We want total closure, but we don't think we're going to get it, so we want alternatives," Reppel said. "It could be 28 feet, it could be 16 feet it could be 12 feet. We have to hear what the corps says first."

The corps also requested $100 million for coastal restoration projects. Most would address wetlands loss east of New Orleans, including $35 million for projects to mitigate erosion near the MR-GO.

That would address only a small portion of the ecological havoc wrought by the shipping channel. Erosion attributed to the Gulf Outlet has caused the destruction of at least 27,000 acres of wetlands around Lake Borgne and Breton Sound, according to a corps report on its environmental impacts.

By placing greater emphasis on floodgates and levees, John Lopez of the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation said, the corps plan is short-sighted. "You need to do levees, but you need to put something in front of the water," Lopez said, referring to the wetlands' ability to blunt storm surges. "You can build really big levees, and maybe that will work for a while. But as the coast gets closer and closer, it's going to put more pressure on those levees."

Lopez's group recommends spending $280 million to constrict the MR-GO to 12 feet deep and 125 feet wide. The money also would restore a natural ridge that runs along Bayou la Loutre and bulk up a battered strip of wetlands between Lake Borgne and the shipping channel.

But the corps' twin floodgate proposal meshes closely with another plan, crafted by Koerner and others in the city's business community and backed by members of the New Orleans Dock Board.

They argue for building a pair of 28-feet deep weirs that could be closed during storms, including one at Paris Road and a second at Bayou la Loutre near Hopedale. One difference from the corps proposal would be a permanent dam at Seabrook instead of a floodgate. Also, the business group plan suggests using submersible bargelike vessels instead of gates to close the Paris Road and Bayou la Loutre flood-control structures.

Koerner said those features could reduce the cost of the corps' proposal by more than half, to between $100 million and $135 million.

It also would keep the channel open to all but the biggest ships serving businesses along the Industrial Canal.

"I don't know what you accomplish by driving the ships out but to vent some frustration," Koerner said. "You haven't stopped the saltwater erosion, and you haven't improved public safety one ounce."

That's a far cry from the more radical closure proposals coming out of St. Bernard, where the name "Mister Go" is uttered with contempt and officials have promised a violent reaction from their constituents if dredging resumes.

Corps officials contend flooding in St. Bernard and eastern New Orleans during Katrina was caused primarily by a surge coming across Lake Borgne -- not up the so-called "hurricane highway" of the MR-GO. The same argument was made in 1965, after Betsy flooded the parish soon after the shipping channel opened.

That argument is roundly rejected in St. Bernard. Parish Council Vice Chairman Joey DiFatta said St. Bernard's first choice is to fill in the channel.

A report completed by the corps last summer said that's not likely to happen via natural processes anytime soon. While the outer reaches of the waterway would fill in due to natural shoaling to a depth of 8 feet within 8 years, the interior stretch would "not experience significant shoaling" even after 50 years, the corps report concluded.

In the meantime, scientists warn the sides of the channel would continue to widen through erosion, with the banks sloughing off into the bottom of the channel without significantly reducing its potential to magnify storm surges.

DiFatta said a more effective option would be to fill it in by dredging sand from the bottom of the Mississippi River. DiFatta said the cost of such a project was not known.

When the channel was built, more material was removed than it took to build the Panama Canal. In the intervening four decades, most of the surrounding land lost to erosion was later removed by dredging, with much of that dumped in Breton Sound.

"It just doesn't make sense," Lopez said. "Basically, you'd have to create a hole just to fill the hole you're filling."

A "secondary" plan backed by the St. Bernard Council would reduce the channel depth to 12 to 14 feet by building water-control structures including one in the vicinity of Bayou la Loutre, DiFatta said. That would keep the channel open to fishing boats and oil service vessels that have continued to use it since Katrina.

The idea matches proposals offered by Lopez's group and also the policy stance taken by the Governor's Advisory Commission on Coastal Protection, Restoration and Conservation.

A 12-foot depth will serve as the state's "benchmark" in pending negotiations between the state and the corps over what should be done with the channel, said Sidney Coffee, Gov. Kathleen Blanco's executive assistant for coastal activities and chairman of the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority.

Left hanging while that debate continues are at least seven businesses along the Industrial Canal that depend at least in part on access to the Gulf through the channel.

The Port of New Orleans has said it would go along with a closure of the channel if the state or federal governments could come up with $382 million to relocate those businesses. After appealing to the Louisiana Recovery Authority for that money last week, port CEO Gary LaGrange was told to narrow that request to address businesses at the most immediate risk.

"There's going to have to be a business case made on a dollar-per-job basis," said LRA Executive Director Andy Kopplin.

Matthew Brown can be reached at mbrown@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3784.