How Effective Are Diversion Structures at Saving Louisiana's Wetlands?
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- Опубліковано 3 лип 2024
- On either side of New Orleans along the Mississippi River sit the Davis Pond and Caernarvon Diversions, where a portion of the river is diverted into the surrounding wetlands. While most people think it's to add sediment to the rapidly-vanishing coastline, the reasons are quite different.
In this video, we will take a tour of the sites, as well as discuss the near 100-year history of diverting the Mississippi into wetlands, the reasons for it, and whether these diversion structures are doing their job.
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About the time of Katrina, I was reading random things on the effects hurricanes have on the ecosystems in Louisiana. Probably the most eye-opening things I stumbled on was a hydrologist stating New Orleans was on the lip of the continental shelf, and New Orleans is in the ocean domain.
More silt can likely be recovered using a Silt Harvester & Concentrator swung out into the river which would use the river's power to pull it out of the water stream and reduce fresh water in the fisheries. As far as I know, no-one has tried working the problem this way.
Up here in Lower Mainland on the Fraser, we use training walls to keep the silt moving at velocities that will ensure it stays suspended. we also use dredging and side casting to shift the dredge materials around. Just looking at the speed of the water, amounts and distances to be covered, it's not surprising that the silt is not having the desired effect. I suspect that a bunch of smaller diversions further down might help get the silt to the locations desired. Casting the silt via pipes may help as well build some islands with it, which will erode, but provide silt build up in other areas.
Interesting. The new big diversions are specifically designed to bring in silt and nutrients though. So they should be much more effective at that than most existing diversions which are designed to bring in freshwater while avoiding getting silted up.
BTW: Here in FL we have cut cut off the Everglades from the watersheds feeding them. Lots of central FL marsh/swamp used to act like a really slow and really wide river.
im in the lower mainland too! 😀
Great video! I am trying to learn more and figure out the best course of action.
Very interesting I'd like to live in LA
heeeeyyyy, VSauce, michael here!
hey guys, mr klein here!
"...Ten thousand river commissions, with all the mines of the world at their back, cannot tame that lawless stream, cannot curb it or confine it, cannot say to it, Go here, or Go there, and make it obey."
-Mark Twain
And yet they did and it’s disastrous. As a citizen of New Orleans, they need to give up on it being a major port city and let the river divert itself. At least we’d be rebuilding the coastline according to its regular routine
@user-lt1jd1ye3v 30 year ago, one of the professors said that even animals know when to move to the higher grounds. Because animals don't have the governments or the so-called help from the government. If there's no federal government run flood insurance, I bet people won build the houses in floodplains.
Thanks, Loren. With each of your videos my amazement for all the civil works done in the Mississippi delta grows. BTW, is the Barataria name related to Don Quixote?
Greetings from Spain!
and i thought it was only his students (including me)
great video
loren,you know as well as i and many others know the reason the mississippi river is losing water is because a man named shreve(for his own greed) promoted the diversion of the red river into the atchafalaya basin,which at that time wasnt as large as it is now,thereby diverting the amount of water going into the mississippi river to less than before that occured.
Thank you
What kind of plants are dying? What's the salinity that supports the shrimp, grabs, oysters etc.
With studies showing negative impact actually happening on other attempts at diversion, question arises on who is making money off this project. Who were the land owners and how long, or not so long ago did they purchase with benefit of insider knowledge. Also imagine the stink when all that chemical runoff up north, not to mention massive algae blooms with nitrogen runoff killing everything like the gulf dead zone. Criminal and those in charge are deluded that they think that this will be beneficial to the wildlife, marsh, coast and fishermen.
Get rid of the levee. All of it.
What is the oxygen levels that supports life? Test the water for chemicals? Check water at all the locks? What fishes are there now.What has died off that this estuary supports? what has been the rainfall average every year. Write all that you have found. Have someone edit your findings that you have written down. Then put in a professional letter head and turn it into a positive and negative impact. John Benoit
Oil marinated seafood 😋
Take a look at West Bay! Mardi Gras Pass! BS-11! Frustrating that people talk about Caernarvon as a land builder when it was engineered to NOT move sediment.
Caernarvon and Davis Pond are Oyster diversions. Also, the landowner at Caernarvon is opposed to land-building, in order to conserve seagrass, and spends a lot of money to PREVENT land building in the area via weirs, levees, and culverts. Land management in the outfall area matters!
There are way to bring on silt, sediment, and soils but the problem it would take a lot of doing and money.
First you have to clear every house are anyone living in these low lying areas clean it all up then you have to have a levy inland always from the coast then you flood these areas first for the sediment to come in and the water will dry up but you also have to have a good plan with trucking companies and equipment companies to move dirt in and you need these coming from further up the Mississippi you have to build up the cost to a certain existent this is all going to take coronating and it would be like building to wall across Texas very expensive Louisiana has bad politics and a lot of things that need fixing
I know a lot can be done but they want to fight and argue instead of fixing the problem.
I have lived in Louisiana Over 50 years.
We can build roads but we can’t maintain anything.
Louisiana does not know how to maintain anything.
We spend our money on some of the stupid stuff in stead of fixing things when they go wrong are maintain things in the first place.
This problem should have been handled right after Katrina that would have been the best time to relocate people and rebuild the coast. Ever year since Katrina we could have fixed a lot and raised a lot of the coast.
There are ways without disrupting the fishing and shrimping.
I have watched videos in other countries it looks like they can move the world but we want to do nothing but argue and then If it don’t go out way then we won’t to sue someone.
I guess they will figure out a way to waste a bunch of money and some one will get caught in fraud and go to jail it’s the Louisiana way.
We should relocate people and rebuild the coast. I agree.
Great info.
Speaking a bit slower would help info transfer.
One thing seems certain, whatever man touches, doesn't end well. Rivers you have to let them be, no matter the reason for altering them. Rivers are not meant to be ditches with water flow determined by man. I've seen it here but on a smaller scale end result is the same, this used to be a beautiful creek, now it's just a muck filled channel, no flow, little fish or wildlife, they built a nice lake further up for floods and recreation, good fishing at first, no so good now, fish don't like it, they escape over the dam. I would too! I never liked what they did.
I have fished both the Delacroix & Pointe A La Hatche areas since 1988.
I am a true believer that the Caernarvon diversion has helped deplete the saltwater fishing industry. Too much fresh water kills the oysters thus killing the ecosystem that fish need to survive.
The specked trout fishing in these areas has depleted year after year because of this.
Stop the idiotic diversions & start the dredging to rebuild the necessary land.
So what was it like here before the levees? What would this area be like if the levees were never built? Just saying this place was not always the way we know it to be. It would be forever changing if it weren’t for human interference.
I agree with the dredging and pumping method though. This should have been started immediately and continued since the construction of the levees. The core should have thought of the long term effects of what they were doing. Instead the saw the money and grabbed it. That’s all these diversions are anyways, a big ole money grab.
I fish Delacroix a bunch. In fact I was just there this past Friday and Saturday and will be again this coming Friday and Saturday. It sucks! I have literally watched it go from World Class to ass in the past 10-15 years. It seems to only be getting worse the longer these so called “diversions” have been flowing unchecked. Black Bay was incredible in my youth, now it’s poo.
Leave it to our government to screw things up. That is what they do.
They need to send all that flood water out west to lake Mead and to lake Powell. We have the money to do it to fix our own country instead of giving for example 10 million to India for gender studies lol
Or 40 billion to Ukraine. I agree, fix US first! How hard is that to understand?
p͎r͎o͎m͎o͎s͎m͎ ☀️