Coastal advocates rally to restore Lower Nine wetlands
24th May 2021 · 0 Comments
By Ryan Whirty
Contributing Writer
In decades past, the Bayou Bienvenue Wetland Triangle in the Lower Ninth Ward was a natural jewel amongst an urban environment. A 12.1-mile-long sliver of brackish water, lilting cypress trees and native wildlife, residents need only have walked a short distance to access the water where they could cast fishing lines, relax and appreciate the natural world.
Today, what was a lush haven of wildlife and marsh is a mere shadow of its former self – a change neither for the better nor by natural means. Extensive logging decimated the waterborne cypress forest, stripping the area of its ecological resources and natural barriers.
That, combined with the steady degradation and largely man-made erosion of Louisiana’s Gulf Coast led to the near death of Bayou Bienvenue. The salinity of the water became so high that much of the wildlife native to the body of water died off or fled, which in turn invited the influx of non-native invasive species that further choked off the marsh’s natural beauty.
Then came the catastrophic impacts of Hurricane Katrina followed by the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster, and the coastal region, from the southern Gulf shoreline up into the bayous and wetlands surrounding New Orleans, suffered incalculable damage.
Now when Ninth Ward residents walk to the wood platform that overlooks Bayou Bienvenue, they see wide-open water, with just a few cypress trees left standing and only a handful of egrets and other birds flitting about. There’s very little fishing to be had, and community members no longer have the natural jewel that helped make the Lower Ninth Ward unique in an urbanized New Orleans.
When Bayou Bienvenue died – becoming what is often termed a “ghost swap” – so did some of the Ninth Ward’s very spirit, and the bayou became a microcosm for how coastal erosion and exploitation of the Gulf Coast’s once vast natural resources can negatively affect the economies and everyday lives of the people living near it.
But a hardy corps of dedicate community organizations and nonprofit agencies are banding together to rescue and revive not just Bayou Bienvenue but much of the state’s coastal ecosystem in ways that not only restore the area’s natural, native wildlife, but also re-establish a cultural connection with the urban neighborhoods that so often derive their economies and their knowledge of the natural world from those coastal treasures.
In particular, advocates see the preservation and regeneration of places like Bayou Bienvenue as a means to educate and enrich the lives of the community’s youth.
“We’re seeing the deterioration of some of the rich culture we have and the impact it has on the city,” said Ashley Robison, communications and engagement manager for the Young Leadership Council, a local nonprofit that recruits young professionals to New Orleans and engages in numerous youth-oriented community projects.
“[Young professionals] can be advocates for the community, and we try to give them the foundation to help them feel confident to have conversations with the community,” Robison added.
Robison also said that such efforts allow young professionals to interact with the community, and especially kids, and encourage youth to learn about the Gulf’s coastline, to join the fight to save it, and to understand how coastline restoration isn’t only about environmentalism.
“It’s not just the deteriorating coastline and the loss of land,” she said, “it’s about the loss of something bigger for the state. … We want to help people see there’s a bigger picture, that communities and the environment and the economy are all affected.”
According to Robison, amongst the myriad of community activities undertaken by the YLC, it schedules tours of local marsh land and water resources, and it’s eyeing possible boat tours. Although such events have been curtailed by the limitations imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, Robison said the organization has continued with virtual events and now hopes to return to more hands-on, interactive gatherings and educational services.
The YLC also partners with several other non-profit and grass-roots entities, including Greater New Orleans Inc., an economic development organization that serves a 10-parish region of Southeast Louisiana by encouraging economic growth combined with improved quality of life.
Jasmine Brown, public policy manager for GNO Inc., said a large part of that mission is environmental protection and coastal restoration, both of which are necessary to grow the local economy, provide jobs and build stronger, more vibrant communities, including ones in urban areas.
Brown said engaging the youth of local communities and encouraging them to become involved in coastal renewal and other environmental preservation projects are a key part of GNO Inc.’s overall mission.
To that end, she said, the organization recently produced a three-part series of videos for local youth that teaches them about the impact of water flow, sediment movement and erosion on the state’s coastlines and bayous. The series was produced in conjunction with the Louisiana Children’s Museum.
“We want to teach them about the Louisiana Coast and the challenges the coast faces, as well as all the opportunities found in our coasts,” Brown said.
She said several other organizations have joined in the production and distribution of the videos, calling it “a collaborative effort.”
One of the groups involved is the Center for Sustainable Engagement and Development, a Lower Ninth Ward-based organization that informs, assists and mobilizes the community in one of the neighborhoods most devastated by Katrina, with a focus on environmental restoration and providing food security through natural, community-driven means.
Among other activities, CSED helps run community gardens and farmers’ markets, and it encourages residents to help grow and sustain their own food with urban agricultural initiatives.
Another facet of CSED’s mission and community efforts has been the development of the Bayou Bienvenue Wetland Triangle and the wooden observation deck that allows residents and tourists alike to look out over the wetlands that are now on the slow road to recovery and renewal.
To that end, representatives from CSED, along with staff from the YLC, GNO Inc. and local educators and wildlife protectionists, gathered last month at the Bayou Bienvenue platform located on Caffin Avenue in the Ninth Ward to give people a tour and science lesson.
The event was co-sponsored by the Coalition for Coastal Resilience and Economy and GNO Inc., and was produced in collaboration with ReStore the Mississippi River Delta, a regional coalition focused on returning Southeast Louisiana’s natural ecosystem through work such as coastal restoration and wetlands revival.
The gathering was highlighted by CSED volunteer coordinator Rollin Black, who related the organization’s aim of engaging, educating and involving Lower Ninth Ward youth in the revival of the local ecosystem and its natural beauty as an effort in which the Bayou Bienvenue Wetland Triangle and platform plays a crucial role.
Black said CSED is fighting to maintain the platform as a gateway for Ninth Ward residents to explore nature, a battle that sometimes involves lobbying and debating with local government officials and corporations like the railroad interests eyeing the site for development.
“This has been an amazing thing in the neighborhood,” Black said of the platform and bayou. “A lot of people appreciate it being here.”
He added that providing opportunities such as fishing, kayaking, summer camps and planting native flora like cypress trees can bring youth to the wetland, which he said will connect the kids to the neighborhood’s history as well as show them the impact coastal deterioration and other environmental challenges can have on their daily lives. Ultimately, he says, things like the Bayou Bienvenue platform can serve as a conduit through which local youth can become active in the restoration process.
“They get hands-on experience being around the water,” Black said. “I want our neighborhood to come together and create an attraction [at the wetland]. It could be something that everyone can enjoy in New Orleans besides the French Quarter and drinking and eating.” Black noted that as an organization, CSED representatives “want it to be uplifting and exciting, a way to learn about the Lower Ninth. We want kids to be involved in how we bring [native species] back.”
He said those involved with the campaign to maintain and enhance the platform face an enormous task, one that needs unity to keep it going. “We need to come up with so many plans to come together and fight for everything,” he said. “We all become like superheroes at the end of the day.”
Also taking part in last month’s gathering at the bayou was Samantha Carter of the Louisiana Wildlife Federation and the outreach coordinator for ReStore the Mississippi River Delta, who filled attendees in on the ways her organization fits in with the myriad of efforts taking place for environmental recovery.
Carter agreed, pointing to Bayou Bienvenue as symbolic of the need to preserve and restore the natural ecosystem in a way that renews and enhances the urban setting.
“This is one of the few places where we can see wetlands from the city,” she said, adding that the Bayou Bienvenue Wetland Triangle has been a part of most of the statewide development master plans because it holds so much educational potential for the community.
Carter added that as Southeast Louisiana passes the 11th anniversary of the devastating BP oil spill that coated the Gulf Coast with petroleum and severely damaged the ecosystem and the economy, the organizations involved in restoration still need to take full advantage of the government funding provided to entities to clean up the disaster and include the spill remediation process in the overall coastal restoration plan.
She said lobbying government officials at every level is needed to maintain the type of funding streams required to continue the oil spill remediation and the recovery of the coastal ecosystem as a whole.
Brown also spoke briefly at the April event, stressing how regional economy and the environment are part of a symbiotic relationship in which each is mutually dependent on and integrated with the other. That’s why it’s so important to advocate for coastal restoration and protection, along with other environmental recovery goals.
“We believe that the protection of a sustainable coastline and economic development are mutually dependent,” she said, adding that the coastal restoration process helps create thousands of jobs and pumps millions of dollars into the local economy.
The recent event at Bayou Bienvenue concluded with a boat tour of key locations and landmarks that have played roles in the deterioration of local coastline and other negative environmental impacts in Southeast Louisiana.
Charter fisherman and oyster farmer Captain PJ welcomed seminar participants onto his craft and talked about how the changes, many of them for the worse, have affected his business and the businesses of other oyster farmers and shrimpers.
Stops on the tour included a portion of the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway, a shipping channel connecting ports along the country’s Atlantic and Gulf coasts; the Inner Harbor Navigational Canal, which links New Orleans port with the GIWW; the Central Wetlands, a 30,000-acre water expanse that is completely surrounded and protected by the region’s intricate levee system; and the IHNC-Lake Borgne surge barrier, a 1.8-mile, $1.1-billion structure completed in 2013 designed to withstand a 100-year storm.
But the primary focus was the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, one of the primary causes of the deterioration of regional coastline, wetlands and other environmental resources that play a vital role in the local economy and quality of life.
An ill-conceived, hastily completed shipping channel dredged in the 1950s and ‘60s that had a calamitous effect on area marshes and water resources, including the Bayou Bienville Wetland, MRGO has expanded so much that it has impacted an area twice as large as initially predicted.
The devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina, followed by the BP disaster, tragically highlighted the way MRGO has crippled the regional economy and quality of life, and much of the efforts of ReStore and other organizations has been to halt, remediate and reverse the damage caused by the shipping channel.
The landmarks highlighted in the boat tour reflected the lingering impact of Hurricane Katrina and the ongoing work being done to both prevent such widespread devastation from future hurricanes, but also continue assessing and remediating the damage done to the coastal regions natural surge barriers and ecosystemic protection.
Last week, Robison said in an interview with The Louisiana Weekly that it’s often through hurricanes that longtime Southeast Louisiana residents have witnessed the importance that the Gulf coastline, bayous and wetlands have on daily life, even after the storms have come and gone for the season.
“[Hurricanes] will remind people that preparing for hurricanes isn’t just about the task at hand,” she said. “[Hurricane season] will really remind people that we need to make sure we have the infrastructure in place to help bear the brunt of those storms.”
This article originally published in the May 24, 2021 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
