'Diversions' screening shines spotlight on coastal restoration

Kerry St. Pe’, former program director at Barataria-Terrebonne Natural Estuary Program, addressed a local audience Wednesday at the Alex P. Allain Memorial Branch Library in Franklin.
First came the 6 p.m. screening of the documentary film, “Diversions,” wherein is examined the conundrum of the necessity of diverting the Mississippi River through the Barataria Basin to utilize the sediments carried therein as marshland restoration vs. the cultural and environmental ramifications of such a diversion.
Following the documentary, St. Pe’ said he didn’t think diversions were detrimental, so long as they were kept to a certain size.
He said he thought the problem with the diversion specified in the documentary, was that it was too big.
Of his estuary program’s action plan, St. Pe’ said, “It was decided that culture was the most important thing in the estuary. We needed to maintain the culture, and what was driving the culture of the estuary.”
He spoke of needing to preserve the heritage of the people in the Barataria estuary system. Yet, the deltaic system, even as a “great place to live,” according to St. Pe’, was arranged in such a way that people built next to waterways because that was the highest ground.
“Other places in the country, they build away from rivers because their rivers are in valleys. So, that’s the big difference,” St. Pe’ said.
“We (the estuary program) took all of our differences, our cultural and ecological differences (from other places) into consideration, added our knowledge of science and we came up with a plan: diversions.
“Our plan called for restoration, restoring the barrier islands, restoring swamps, and restoring the marshes through diversions. But, we couldn’t come to an agreement on the size of the diversions we would allow.”
St. Pe’ explained that the problem was that the massive water diversions that were needed in the Barataria Estuary, would destroy the culture through changing the salinity of the marshes.
What is St. Pe’s solution? He said he would rather see sediment relocated through pipes after being harvested by dredges, a system called pipeline slurrying.
“The state has done some projects like building 450 acres of wetland in a month by pumping sediment six miles through pipe, and there were bulldozers at the end of the pipe, moving the sediment, it was settling that quickly,” he said
Or the answer could be a combination of pipeline slurrying and small to mid-sized diversions.
Whatever the answer, it may come as a comfort to southeast Louisiana residents to know that there is a way to undo what has been done to coastal wetlands, and that people are looking out for those who stand to be affected, on both sides of the issue.