Illinois Mud to the Rescue

 

Thus, bringing mud down river by barge or pipeline could be a good alternative. There is an additional benefit: Officials from Illinois say an agreement would result in the removal of mud that is clogging Illinois waterways.

Mud from the Illinois River may soon be transported to Louisiana to fill in wetlands tattered and punctured by Hurricane Katrina. Louisiana officials want to bolster the marshes as a barrier against potential storm surges from future hurricanes and are in early talks with Illinois to transport by barge or pipeline large amounts of mud to the Louisiana coast. “The material we have here is very much like what the delta was built up with,” said John Marlin, senior scientist with the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.

Scientists say 2.7 miles of marsh knocks out one foot of storm surge. Since the 1950s, more than 8,000 miles of canals have been dug for oil and gas exploration and shipping in the area, causing more than a third of coastal Louisiana’s loss of 1,900 square miles of marsh since the 1930s, experts say. Before the levees were built, the Mississippi River overflowed in the spring and replenished Louisiana’s marshes and swamps with silt, sand and mud. But today the 200 million tons of sediment that come down the river flow straight into the Gulf. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is studying ways to let the river run free, but large manmade diversions can take years to build and in the past have been stymied by fishermen wary of having their fishing grounds flooded. Thus, bringing mud down river by barge or pipeline could be a good alternative. There is an additional benefit: Officials from Illinois say an agreement would result in the removal of mud that is clogging Illinois waterways.

Louisiana environmental officials are also thinking of building up the marshes by recycling tree limbs and the timber from smashed wood homes. The debris could be bundled to create fences along the shore that would trap sediment and slow down the wave action that gnaws at the coast. Building up coastal reefs also would help weaken potential future storm surge and officials are considering grinding up the estimated 50,000 fiberglass boats destroyed by Katrina and mixing them with cement to create artificial reefs.

Source: Associated Press