Bob Bendick

From Bob Bendick: Earth Day in Alabama 2022

This Earth Day, the Alabama Chapter of The Nature Conservancy celebrated the completion of the Lightning Point coastal restoration project at Bayou La Batre, Alabama. Bayou La Batre is a fishing and shipbuilding port at the east end of Mississippi Sound whose frontage on the Gulf has suffered from coastal erosion, exposing the port to severe damage by storms.

The project, funded by the Gulf Environmental Benefit Funds administered by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, included construction of a series of breakwaters backed by a 40-acre salt marsh complete with several winding marsh creeks. An upland area was also revegetated and protected from further erosion. The project has had strong community support, has already won several design awards and is one of the foremost examples in the U.S. of hybrid infrastructure that uses natural features in combination with traditional infrastructure to reduce storm risks to built-up areas while enhancing or adding to habitat for fish and wildlife. The project was led by Judy Haner and Mary Kate Brown of the Alabama Chapter staff.

Following remarks by Alabama Governor Kay Ivey and others and the ribbon-cutting event, and after everyone else had left the site, I walked through part of the restored area (taking care not to step on any recently planted vegetation). A strong wind was blowing from the east, and waves were breaking against the stone jetties. The site was teeming with birds, including terns diving into the marsh creeks for small fish. A great blue heron stood patiently at the edge of the water. Lines of pelicans passed overhead. I watched a blue crab scuttling along in the shallow water.

When I returned to the overlook above the marsh and could see how the Lightning Point project fit into the conservation and restoration of the shoreline from Dauphin Island in Alabama to Grand Bay in Mississippi, I felt a strong sense of the possible. I could see how, while we cannot put the Gulf of Mexico back to the way it was before European settlement, we can work with nature and natural principles to create and sustain a Gulf that’s good for people, fish and wildlife and retains the historical relationship of people to the Gulf region’s natural resources.

The Lightning Point project shows that when we bring sound engineering and science together with honest community engagement, good things get done. This has been the case elsewhere in Gulf restoration supported by Deepwater Horizon Settlement funds. Lightning Point and the Gulf are places of hope for a good and more resilient environmental future and, thus, fitting venues for celebrating this 2022 Earth Day.

From Bob Bendick: Natural Infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico

The swallow-tailed kite is a handsome raptor of southern swamps with striking black and white coloring and a forked tail that it uses to bank gracefully above the forest canopy. If you were a swallow-tailed kite wheeling above the great Atchafalaya River floodplain in south Louisiana, you would see a million acres of cypress and tupelo, sweetgum and maple unbroken by roads and towns. And, today, the Atchafalaya basin would be filled with brown, silt-laden water overflowing from the flood-swollen Mississippi River. 

The Mississippi River started to rise in November, 2018, reached flood stage in Louisiana just after Christmas, and remained at flood stage through most of the summer into August. This is the longest period of Mississippi flooding in recorded history.

In July, 2019, this protracted flooding interacted with a tropical system, as Hurricane Barry threatened to send a storm surge up the already swollen river and overtop levees in southeastern Louisiana. While the hurricane’s westerly track spared New Orleans from disaster this time, a changing climate means that more such flooding will be likely. This will put unprecedented pressure on traditional flood protection infrastructure.

While it may seem that nature itself is a threat, it’s actually an important part of the solution.

Natural Floodplains Absorb Excess Water

Natural floodplains are integral to the health of  river systems. They give excess water a place to go besides the main channel, lowering flood heights and taking pressure off manmade flood barriers.

Just north of Baton Rouge, at the Old River Control Structure, the Army Corps of Engineers sends up to about 30% of the Mississippi’s water down the Atchafalaya River, a shortcut to the Gulf of Mexico. This takes pressure off the levees in Baton Rouge and New Orleans.

While the Atchafalaya has suffered its own hydrological manipulation, it can accept so much of the Mississippi’s water because it is not just a narrow channel confined by flood barriers. Its levees are set 15 miles apart, and in between the levees are a million-acres of wooded swamps and coastal marshes. The bottomland hardwood forests in the Atchafalaya are resilient to flooding. They absorb flood impacts by allowing water to spread out and up unimpeded by built-up areas.

Wetlands Provide Multiple Benefits

These wetlands have other benefits. They reduce nutrient pollution by processing excess nitrogen and phosphorus coming from agriculture and urban areas up the Mississippi. They are habitat for a diversity of plants, fish and wildlife. They store carbon, support a large crawfish industry and offer opportunities for hunting, fishing and watching wildlife. 

Natural Infrastructure Funding Protects Communities

The Atchafalaya Basin is a prime example of what is termed natural infrastructure—natural features providing real and quantifiable services to people. And not just nice-to-have services, but those that save lives and communities from devastation in times of high water.

The Atchafalaya Basin is not unique. At other places around the Gulf of Mexico, planners and engineers are realizing that natural features and natural systems can be functional and cost-effective in reducing the risks of storms and floods.

In Houston, Hurricane Harvey’s torrential rains flooded parts of the city built on old bayous that had once carried water to Galveston Bay. Now, plans are being implemented to buy out homes and peel back development from some of those low areas to restore the bayous as corridors for flood waters and places for bicycle paths and outdoor recreation. This project will also save the government from paying for repetitive flood losses in flood-prone parts of Houston. 

Natural features alone will not protect built-up areas from every natural hazard. New Orleans and Baton Rouge will still need their levees along the Mississippi River. However, as our country considers legislation to finance renewal of the nation’s infrastructure, restoring and protecting floodplains, tidal marshes and barrier islands should be as eligible for funding as concrete and steel storm defenses.

Those man-made defenses are costly to build and maintain. They are also vulnerable to the extremes of a changing climate. Meanwhile, natural solutions to flooding provide additional benefits: They process pollutants, store carbon, create opportunities for outdoor recreation, and provide a place for swallow-tailed kites to wheel above the trees in a landscape which, left alone, has been adapted and resilient to storms and floods for thousands of years.