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The Daily Review/Bill Decker
Margaret Metz Theriot speaks Jan. 13 to the St. Mary Parish Council about efforts to designate a National Estuarine Research Reserve in the parish.

St. Mary Excel will host meeting Friday with facts on estuarine reserve

It’s been called the “road show.”
It’s the effort to give the public information about the effort to designate a National Estuarine Research Reserve somewhere on Louisiana’s coast.
And it’s coming to Morgan City Municipal Auditorium at 9 a.m. Friday in a virtual event as part of a St. Mary Excel meeting.
St. Mary Excel is the citizens group that commissioned an Urban Land Institute study of development opportunities in Morgan City and Berwick two years ago. Now Excel is behind the effort to designate a National Estuarine Research Reserve, or NERR, in St. Mary’s portion of the Atchafalaya region.
NERRs are devoted to the study of natural history where rivers meet salt water. The reserves can be on public land, private land or some combination. The program is run by the National Oceanic and Atmo-spheric Administration, but state land use rules continue to apply in the NERRs.
The federal government pays 70% of the operating expenses, and the state picks up the rest.
NERRs dot the Gulf Coast, and Louisiana is the only state without one.
The reserve serves as a place to monitor and study the ecosystems that provide wildlife habitat, play a role as hatcheries for commercially important fish species and protect the coast from hurricanes.
College students would come there as they study biology and other subjects. K-12 students could take field trips there. And the reserve could attract tourists, who would spend money at hotels and other businesses.
Gov. John Bel Edwards has signed off on the idea of a Louisiana NERR, and seven broad areas of the Louisiana coast where a NERR could be designated. The lower Atchafalaya is one of those areas.
The idea seems to be catching on locally.
St. Mary Excel board members Margaret Metz Theriot and Kelly Lin Boudreaux have been making the rounds at local government meetings to pitch the idea of a St. Mary Parish NERR. So far, the St. Mary Parish Council, the Morgan City Council, the St. Mary Parish School Board and the Berwick Town Council have adopted resolutions supporting a St. Mary Parish NERR.
Berwick Mayor Duval Arthur thinks the area would benefit from any hiring associated with the NERR and from the study of natural resources here.
“What do we have here?” Arthur said. “We have the crabs, the shrimp, the fish. They’ll study all that.
“What can we do to improve that? What can we do to farm that? It’s a win-win to me.”
Not all the benefits are economic. Arthur takes his grandchildren to an annual event at Nicholls State that focuses on the biology and chemistry of the natural world on the coast.
“This [NERR] would be like that all the time,” Arthur said.
Morgan Crutcher of the Governor’s Office and Kristin Ransom of NOAA are scheduled to speak at Friday’s event.
Dr. John Doucet of Nicholls State is also set to speak about Nicholls coastal studies.
Friday’s agenda also includes a presentation by parish Chief Administrative Officer Henry C. “Bo” LaGrange about local efforts to create a resilience lab. Morgan City Mayor Lee Dragna and Excel member Catherine Holcomb will talk about grants and updates related to bike trails.
Arthur and Kevin Belanger of the South Central Planning and Development Commission will talk about community development and planning. And Holcomb and Laura Dozar will speak about subdivision signs.

ST. MARY NOW

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