R E S T O R AT I O N
“We Can’t Not Try” A CLOSER LOOK AT MARSH CREATION
Story by Catherine Schoeffler Comeaux • Photos by Sean Gasser
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or millennia, the Mississippi River Delta region has been a place shaped by floods. Receding waters leave behind land-forming sediment in some areas while natural erosion carries it away in others—resulting in a cyclic, shape-shifting coast that, for a time, maintained its fertile acreage. Then came human ingenuity, which altered the Mississippi River to provide navigation, irrigation, commerce, energy, and a variety of solutions to diverse needs. One of the unintended consequences of these alterations, though, is the region’s deprivation of sediment which, compounded by erosion and subsidence, has resulted in the drastic loss of South Louisiana’s wetlands. “We have a complex issue,” said Windell Curole, general manager of the South Lafourche Levee District as he spoke to a small group of us on a recent tour of the various restoration projects Ducks Unlimited Inc. (DU) has overseen in Golden Meadow in recent years. “We have one of the great deltas of the world and every great delta has two things: great opportunity and great risk. The challenge is to use the opportunity to minimize the risk.” Curole has harnessed the opportunities of the coast, spending his childhood catching fish in the canals to help feed his family and shrimping in the Gulf to pay for college at Nicholls State University, where he earned a degree in biology. He also is all too aware of the risk of living in a place so shaped by the waters around it. Destructive hurricanes, flooding, and disappearing land successively pushed Curole’s ancestors northward over the past century, from the coast at Cheniere Caminada to where he now lives in Lafourche Parish about thirty-five miles from the open waters of the Gulf. “We’ve retreated, the Gulf has followed us,” he said. Today, Curole brings his years of experience as an extension services fisheries agent for the Louisiana State University AgCenter to his work at the levee district where, for over forty years, he has had a hand in maintaining the levee system that protects the communities it encircles from the threat of flooding. He was considered a hero when the levees withstood a direct hit from Hurricane Ida in August 2021. The Golden Meadow Marsh Creation and Nourishment Project has built upon Curole’s work, strengthening the levee system’s line of defense against the increasing threat of hurricanes and rising sea levels. Ducks Unlimited launched the project in 2019, in partnership with ConocoPhillips/Louisiana Land and Explo-
ration Company, the Lafourche Parish Government, the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority (CPRA), the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Shell, and TransRe. A hydraulic dredge was used to pump sediment from nearby Catfish Lake through a temporary pipeline system into a series of shallow ponds that were at one time marshland. When active work was completed in 2020, this project—an elaborate nudging of nature’s inclination to use sediment to build land—had already restored and nourished 140 acres of marshland adjacent to the South Lafourche Levee System. The project is one of several restoration projects DU has overseen on the Gulf Coast as part of its mission to conserve waterfowl habitat in North America; so far, the organization has played a role in conserving over 497,000 acres of habitat in Louisiana alone. Mike Carloss, DU Director of Conservation Programs for the Southwest, joined us on the tour, noting, “The Golden Meadow marsh restoration project is a strategic use of limited funds with critical partners and landowners doing their best work to benefit the ecosystem, fisheries, water quality, and other ecosystem services, as well as the communities—not only the livelihoods of the people but by helping to protect them from storm impacts such as flooding.” Our small group, including Curole and other project partners, drove the levee southward to see the effects of DU’s work in the region. In the areas outside the scope of the project, we saw broken marsh interspersed with open water all the way to the horizon, where a blue sky met the muted yellows and bright greens of the marsh grasses. Leslie Suazo, DU’s Coastal Restoration Coordinator, pointed out the duck wing-shaped terraces created by DU and other partners: twenty-five acres of the V-shaped and linear terraces created with carefully placed dredged material. I was surprised at how well they were integrated into the existing landscape. Measuring approximately one thousand feet long, forty feet wide at the base, and about ten feet wide at the top—each terrace was planted with native oyster grass. Nature quickly filled in with other marsh vegetation like wire grass and leafy three-square—all which help to hold the terraces in place as they buffer existing marshland and the toe of the levee against the wave action that continuously erodes both. Carloss pointed out the groundsel bush growing along several of the ter-
races. He noted that this small bush provides cover and habitat for various birds while adding to the structure of the newly restored land. Groundsel, referred to as manglier in some areas of South Louisiana, is used in Native American, Creole, and Cajun culture to make a bitter tea known to cure fevers, chills and congestion. (Note: The word manglier comes from the French word for the black mangrove—a totally different plant which grows sparsely in the southernmost areas of the Louisiana coast. To further complicate this matter of plant nomenclature, in Carloss’s hometown of Abbeville, the word manglier refers to the wax myrtle. If you are confused, be sure to get your manglier tea from a reputable source and don’t try to make it at home.) The vegetated terraces calm the water so that subaquatic plants can take hold and thrive—providing habitat and nourishment for aquatic and avian species alike. Several of the terraces in the Golden Meadow project were designed to include 3D-printed blocks comprised of biologically-enhanced concrete, which is made with a locally-developed mixture specifically engineered to attract oysters. The strategically-placed, irregularly-shaped blocks, created by Tyler Ortego of Ora Estuaries, form a structure that invites oysters to take hold, adding to the diversity of life that keeps the marshland in place. “Can we walk on it?” Sean Gasser, the photographer, asked as we came to the point on the levee overlooking the 140 acres of continuous marshland. Curole responded with confidence, “Yes, you can. It’s amazing how quick the change. That marsh was out there, and I could see it in my lifetime eroding away, and in a couple of years—boom, it’s back! It’s amazing how well it comes back. You put some dirt above the waterline, and it germinates.” I hadn’t worn my knee boots, so I stepped out on faith, following Gasser into the chest-high grasses. Feeling the dense, spongy give underfoot I recalled trudging through the marshes with my father as a child, looking for a whitetailed deer, the land seeming to move beneath my feet. The mud released the smell of new grasses comingled with rotting humus—a somewhat sweet, subtle stink promising new life— “boue pourri,” Curole called it: the South Louisiana French term for “rotten mud”. Crouching in the grasses on the edge of the newly-restored marshland, we heard red-winged blackbirds and watched a small gulp of cormorants perched in a low tree. At our feet, we noticed mussel shells embedded deep // J U N 2 2
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