Reply #7: Let The River Run Through It: Harnessing the Mississippi to Save Louisiana's Wetlands from the Oil

[Baclava]

makes sense to me - that's probably why they'll never use it.


http://blogs.edf.org/restorationandresilience/2010/07/14/let-the-river-run-through-it-harnessing-the-mississippi-to-save-louisianas-wetlands-from-the-oil-spill/


With crude continuing to float into coastal marshes, area residents have been left wondering how oil will be prevented from destroying the wetlands that they call home.

Engineers, energy companies, and the government have proposed a veritable suite of mitigation techniques, from booms to berms to rock dikes, but none has yet emerged as an effective, sustainable, and economically sound solution. Indeed, unfinished artificial islands constructed to shield the coast from the oil spill have already begun crumbling into the Gulf of Mexico.

Several prominent coastal scientists have advocated harnessing the Mississippi River for this purpose. In a memo sent earlier this summer to the EPA Tech Team, Dr. Paul Kemp, a scientist at the National Audubon Society, outlined this method of preventing oil encroachment in Louisiana’s coastal region. Kemp suggested that, at least temporarily, active management of existing US Army Corp of Engineers structures at Old River could allow the flow of the Mississippi to force oil away from the Pelican State’s wetlands.

In its current state, the Mississippi is a complex man-made water management system that prevents flooding in cities like New Orleans that line its banks. However, experts like Kemp believe that a shift in tributary streams would allow a more "robust" flow. This would keep the oil at bay and buy time for cleanup crews struggling to contain the mess, while still preventing flooding in the low-lying communities if managed correctly by river engineers.