Floating Islands to Restore Marsh
Thursday, September 29, 2011 | Source
Floating Islands to Restore Marsh
BY TERRY TRAHAN JR.
A handful of organizations have their fingers crossed that 187 “floating islands” planted near what’s left of the road that leads to Isle de Jean Charles will support existing marshes and create new land, all while raising awareness for those who call the island home.
Over 300 volunteers gathered Sept. 22-24 along Island Road to assemble the man-made islands and secure them in the open water, a project about a year and a half in the making. Each island is arranged on a mat measuring 5 feet by 8 feet, and contains up to 60 plants. The 1,500 linear feet of islands were joined together in an effort to create a larger piece of land that would continue to grow and expand.
“The hope is that existing marshes will be able to regrow themselves because they’re being protected,” said Buddy Boe, a spokesperson for America’s Wetland Foundation.
The Coastal Conservation Association of Louisiana, Terrebonne Parish Consolidated Government, Entergy and America’s Wetland Foundation have financially supported the plan, which is based on a proven method and an experimental one. Islands planted near the levee systems in south Lafourche and Bayou Sauvage have withstood recent storms, and those located in Bayou Sauvage have begun growing new marsh.
Placing the anchored islands in the open water is the experiment. The roots of the plants are expected to grow through the mats in about 18 months and eventually anchor to the marsh while spreading seeds and trapping sediments. Over time, the marsh should begin to grow and regain some of what it has lost.
“They’re not intended to replace marsh creation,” said Nick Matherne, director of Coastal Restoration and Preservation for Terrebonne Parish, about the floating islands. “They are a supplement as part of the larger picture of defending our coast.”
The “green” project uses plants purchased from a local nursery in Pointe-aux-Chenes and mats made from recycled plastic, such as soda bottles. The mats feel like Brillo pads and house what will become restored marshland if all goes according to plan. Volunteers assemble these mats on land, and others anchor them to clay bottoms once they reach the water. Near Island Road, water levels range from 15-18 feet deep.
“It allows what would have gone into a landfill to instead be used to create land,” Boe said.
In addition to adult volunteers from the sponsoring organizations, students from local schools took an extra recess to get their hands dirty by planting and helping to create new land with the mats.
“They were able to see something innovative—something new, so they may want to be inventors,” said Sandra Sevin, principal of Pointe-aux-Chenes Elementary School. “It goes with our grade-level expectations for learning about the environment.”
The students were invited to participate in the planting by Shell, a company that also supports the new technology.
“In a physical sense, we’re creating land,” Boe said. “In an emotional sense, we’re protecting a community.”
That community includes the Native Americans who have called Isle de Jean Charles home for the past 150 years. They have watched their unprotected land fall victim to erosion and other acts of nature.
While the Native Americans have traditionally provided for themselves by living off the land, that task is becoming harder to do now that many of their communities fall outside of the levee protection systems. That means when storms batter the area with high winds and surges of water, the land disappears at a quicker rate.
But storms aren’t the only forces that take their livelihoods away. Each year, erosion eats away 25,000 acres of Louisiana’s coastline. After 150 years, all that’s left is a tiny strip of land leading to Isle de Jean Charles.
“We’ve adopted a policy that suggests no net loss of culture,” Boe said about the motivation behind placing the floating islands along Island Road. “They’ve been told they have to move or wait until their land disappears. For that to happen to the Native Americans would be a tragedy.”
The plantings took place in advance of a Blue Ribbon Resilient Communities forum, an event also hosted by the America’s Wetland Foundation. The two-day forum began on Wednesday and opened the floor for discussion about pertinent issues facing local communities along Louisiana’s coast.
Whether it’s a meeting to discuss what needs to take place, or a gathering to put that plan into action, locals from every demographic have gotten involved and made known that restoring the coast should be a priority now before that last strip of land surrenders to the encroaching army of water around it.
Isle de Jean Charles is just one example among many. Across the coast, ways of life erode with the vulnerable land, taking a culture with it one square mile at a time.
“We had every generation represented,” Boe said optimistically. “That’s what the solution to our coastal restoration is going to take.”
