Work continues to make NERR a reality here

One last step remains before a federal research reserve designation recognizes the unique coastal ecology in and near St. Mary Parish.
Taking that step requires acknowledging that South Louisiana’s coast is also a workplace.
That was the word Wednesday from Dr. Brian Roberts at a St. Mary Chamber luncheon at the Petroleum Club of Morgan City. Roberts is the executive director of the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, the lead state agency for creating a national estuarine research reserve here.
Local supporters are hoping that the Atchafalaya River reserve, known as a NERR, will provide educational opportunities for local students and a tourism attraction in addition to environmental research.
Louisiana is the last coastal state without a NERR. A five-year process, which began with a letter from then-Gov. John Bel Edwards in 2019, has resulted in the choice of the Atchafalaya as a NERR site.
Now only a final designation from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association remains. And that work is underway by NOAA, the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority and the consortium, known as LUMCON.
“We’re at the stage where legal is where we’re at,” Roberts said.
The NERR will be located on state-owned land, Roberts said. The current work focuses on distinguishing between core research areas and buffer areas where the ecology may have been altered by oil and gas work or other activities.
“That’s not necessarily a problem,” Roberts said. “But it is a little different from some of the other places.”
An Atchafalaya NERR will create opportunities to study a one-of-a-kind coastal habitat that also includes the nation’s fifth-largest river in terms of discharge.
The NERR will receive 70% of its funding from the federal government and the rest from the state.
It will be part of a network of reserves dotting the East Coast, the Gulf Coast and the West Coast.
The selection of the Atchafalaya site came after nine potential sites were narrowed to three — the Atchafalaya, Barataria and Pontchartrain.
The Atchafalaya was selected in part because of the public response, Roberts said.
The St. Mary Excel citizens group obtained resolutions of support from local governments. Town hall meetings were held in each of the three zones. Attendance in Morgan City exceeded the combined attendance in the other two zones, Roberts said.
“They were pulling chairs out of I don’t know where,” Roberts said.
LUMCON itself brings together all 32 Louisiana post-secondary institutions in an effort to “promote, facilitate and conduct research and educational collaborations among Louisiana’s universities in marine and coast sciences relevant to the sustainability of coastal and marine environments of the Gulf of Mexico.”
LUMCON has a Marine Center in Cocodrie and a Maritime Campus in Houma.
It has a pair of boats and dive operations used in research.