DNR, oil company pledge to save the swamp

An unlikely coalition of environmentalists, industry and government have pledged their troth to restore the natural hydrology of some 5,300 acres in the 800,000-plus-acre Atchafalaya Basin by pouring a lot of money into it.
The partners are:
•The Nature Conservancy, a Virginia-based 501(c)(3) that acquires or otherwise sees to the ecological health of well over 100 million acres around the world, including over 300,000 in Louisiana. (The famous rookery at Lake Martin and much of the swampland surrounding is TNC property.)
•The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
•The Atchafalaya Basin Program (ABP), a branch of the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources.
•Shell Pipeline Company.
Representatives of these four entities signed a “memorandum of understanding,” or MOU, at the Atchafalaya Basin Welcome Center here on Dec. 17 opening the sluice for a million-dollar grant from the North American Wetlands Conservation Council, a group that administers federal funds.
This comes on top of a $1.6 million contribution from Shell, an undisclosed amount TNC paid the landowner for the 5,300 acres, and whatever monies DNR/ABP have chipped in. The entire initiative, building on ABP’s existing (on paper) East Grand Lake Project, is estimated to cost $10 million over five years.
And after the pipeline spoil banks have been rendered permeable to the seasonal sheet flow of flood water, and silted-in natural waterways have been dredged out to improve circulation in swamps now characterized by pools of stagnant water, TNC intends to use its Atchafalaya Basin Preserve for science. Plans are to build a small research facility at Bayou Sorrel and to buy more land, eventually expanding the preserve to around 10,000 acres.
Among other things, TNC researchers will keep track of the health of the crawfish, a key link in nature’s food chain that includes traditional crawfishermen and their families, said Dr. Bryan Piazza, TNC’s director of freshwater and marine science and one of hundreds of scientists the organization employs worldwide.
The crawfishermen themselves, and some of their environmentalist allies, remain skeptical.
“We do not see anything to celebrate in TNC’s press release regarding the MOU on Bayou Sorrel, at least not yet,” said Dean Wilson, a former commercial fisherman and now head of the environmental watchdog Basinkeeper.
“Let’s hope that TNC will do the right thing, but looking at the history of everyone involved and TNC and LDNR’s refusal to include other groups in this MOU, it does not look too promising,” Wilson said.
He notes that Basinkeeper, the Sierra Club, the Louisiana Crawfish Producers Association – West all opposed the East Grand Lake Project when it was originally proposed years ago.
“We saw the project as yet another attempt by large landowners in the Basin to use public funds to transform swamplands into uplands, Wilson said. “Many Basin landowners support projects like this one because transforming swamplands into uplands will decrease government regulations, increase the value of the land, and end their feuds with fishermen over access.”
(See “Atchafalaya Basinkeeper Dean Wilson statement:” in State News.)
TNC bought its 5,300 acres from A. Wilbert’s Sons LLC, which owns or manages some 125,000 acres, about 40,000 of it in the Basin.
“We wanted to sell it to someone who thought of the property like we did – not to preserve but to conserve,” Vic Blanchard, the company’s local land manager, was quoted in the news after the sale last July.
The company has been accused by the Basinkeeper, LCPA-West, and Louisiana Environmental Action Network (LEAN) of allowing an oil company to build a permanent road across natural bayous in the Basin, blocking both navigation and the natural flow of the water for the sake of a hunting club leasing the company’s land.
The Atchafalaya Basin Program and DNR recently lost a civil suit in state district court, the centerpiece of which was Bayou Postillion, a supposed water quality project patently shown to be a barge canal benefitting the adjacent landowner.
And Shell Pipeline Company is one of numerous defendants settling out of court in 2013 in a suit filed by members of the LCPA-West who claimed damages to their livelihoods by the improper positioning of spoil alongside the many canals crisscrossing the Basin – widely recognized as the primary cause for bad water and a major contributor to sedimentation.
“The partnership created to develop this project is deeply troublesome,” said Basinkeeper’s Wilson. “As we are seeing with Bayou Postillion and many other cases, some Basin landowners wield enormous influence over LDNR, USFWS, and the Corps of Engineers. The USFWS is unfortunately on record supporting projects that would have converted swamplands into uplands and Shell has an objectively abysmal environmental record in the Basin.”
TNC is clearly the wild card in this situation. Its relationship with DNR goes back at least to 2009, when the agency, stung by criticism of water projects like Bayou Postillion, signed on The Nature Conservancy to ensure such projects have “a science-based approach and transparency.”
In 2012, TNC teamed up with Shell, which donated half a million dollars toward restoring an island bird habitat near Aransas Pass, Texas.
“The Nature Conservancy can’t achieve on-the-ground conservation without great partners,” said TNC’s Louisiana director Keith Ouchley.
“Through our private-public partnership with TNC, our Atchafalaya Basin Program can leverage resources to expand our hydrological restoration efforts in the East Grand Lake area of the Atchafalaya,” said DNR Secretary Stephen Chustz. “We hope this is just a beginning to a series of conservation investments in the Atchafalaya Basin, a resource that is so unique and special to Louisianans and is really the heartbeat of the Cajun culture.”
“At Shell, we always strive to make a positive impact in the places where our employees live and where we do business,” said Greg Smith, general manager of Shell Pipeline Operations.
“This project is vital for all who care about the Atchafalaya, including private landowners, fishermen, hunters, and all who value America’s great river swamp,” said Jim Bergan, director of freshwater and wetland conservation for TNC.
“Sierra Club Delta Chapter has long advocated for restoration of natural water flows in the Atchafalaya Basin,” said Woody Martin, chairman of the Acadiana-based Sierra Club chapter.
“We hope that this new alliance will help to remove artificial barriers to natural water flows and help to reduce sedimentation which is filling in some of the most productive wetland areas in the Basin.”
“Announcing this collaboration to ‘Protect and Restore the Atchafalaya Basin’ with a suspect assemblage of partners under a bright and hopeful banner may be a sad attempt to get public support for projects that will fill valuable swamps in the Atchafalaya Basin,” said Wilson.