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A critic of Lousiana's attempts to build sand berms as oil spill barriers is saying, "I told you so."
Len Bahr, a former Louisiana State University marine sciences professor, posted images on his blog and sent msnbc.com a few more that he says shows how a new berm off the Chandeleur Islands is being washed away.
"These artificial sand ridges, planned in a science vacuum, will not survive the 2010 hurricane season," he predicted.
Lousiana Gov. Bobby Jindal had lobbied for, and got, federal permission to try the berms.
Bahr -- who also worked on coastal preservation projects for several state governors, including Jindal -- said the work might be motivated more by profits than science, calling "the aggressive selling of the project suspicious and suggests a hidden motive involving massive dredging contracts."
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That's a shame. Nature has done it better for a million years in the gulf area. The natural sand bar areas are disappearing because the delta has been changed by man and no longer deposits massive amounts of silt and natural detrius year-round. I think it would take massive dredging efforts and cost more than can be sustained to duplicate what nature does so efficiently.
Those massive amounts of silt and natural detrius each year you plea for is actually top soil from the plain states that support our aggriculture industry. Lets go with your thought and get rid of soil conservation, Mark-515467 = Earth Hater.
Salt River- Historically the Missouri River carried something like 70 % of the sediment load in the Mississippi River basin. This goes way back to Lewis and Clarke times. The Sloan-Pick plan to place six huge dams on the Missouri dramatically reduced that. It's true that more sediment now comes from places like Iowa, Illinois, etc., but that sediment never reaches the wetlands because of the extensive levee system in the lower Mississippi. To do what Mark is talking about would require either a huge, risky, expensive venture in re-routing the sediment load of the Mississippi or basically allowing periodic flooding of lower Louisiana. Neither one is satisfactory. This is where we are.
the berm pictured wasn't even CLOSE to being finished. I lived on a barrier island off the coast of N.C. and the ones there were well over 25 feet tall, so for whoever Len Bahr is, to go waggin' the ol' "I told you so" finger...maybe he/she needs a bit more education and patience. At least an attempt is better than nothing!
the problem all along was that there wasn't enough sand in the right places to build the 25-foot berms you may have in NC. There also wasn't enough time to stabilize them with things like sea oats. Sure, an attempt is better than nothing, but why not save your ammo for the attempt people agree will work? Doesn't get Jindal enough TeeVee time, I guess.
better than nothing? r u blind? doing nothing would have been free and yielded the same results. so all the man hours and money was wasted - better than nothing? what a stupid thing to type/say
Workaday, it's obvious that you don't have a clue as to the forces that wave action can have on sand. There is absolutely nothing that was workable with this plan. Sea oats? Give me a break!
Chuck, you're naive if you think that a puny little 25' berm would be stabile. On the west coast we have 100' cliffs that can't stand up against the forces of wave action. The first hurricane would have destroyed these berms to the point that there would be no evidence that they ever existed.
JBN - It's not rocket science. Sea oats have enormous root systems and thrive in dune environments. It's not unusual for the USACE to plant sea oats on the berms they build all over the Gulf Coast. But that's when you have presumably a few years between major storm events and lots of sand. The problem here was that they had almost no sand, even less time, and were working under the assumption that the oil would come in one big wave, be captured by the islands, and then no more oil would come. They were also working under the assumption (correct, as it turned out) that CNN, MSNBC, and other poorly-sourced news outlets wouldn't present the reasons for the government denying the original permit to do this.
JBN - Have you ever been to the Gulf Coast? The wave action there, even in a tropical storm, really pales in comparison to the wave action on the West Coast. There isn't 100' cliff to be found anywhere in the Gulf. The coastal shelf in the Gulf is very shallow and not conducive to huge wave forces. This is one reason there is so much marsh habitat in the first place.
ugh. This is what turning the BP Oil Disaster into a cheap political theater gets you. The government doesn't pay coastal scientists to check email and publish scientific papers. They pay them to give good answers when things like this pop up. Unfortunately, Bobby Jindal saw too much of a political opportunity and decided to go with the handlers rather than the scientists.
Take a lightweight politician, add a heavyweight crisis, then whisper into the night "Hello Bobby...how did you ever get elected to a governorship of a U.S. state? I'm stumped...
He got elected to a governorship of a US state because all of the stupid spots in DC were already filled by democrats.
Those of us on the west coast could have told Jindal that this was a hair-brained idea. More than likely this fiasco will do more damage to the ecosystem than anything else. Waste of time, energy and money!
There is technology to build "artificial" islands that has been used in the middle east in Dubai to build their resorts and expand ocean front property. Aparently there is not a true concern with building the sand barriers otherwise they would have looked into a more advanced technology to try and resolve this issue quickly and effectively. The politics in this situation seem a little ridiculous if you ask me. We still face the same problem of containment. When there is any spill or release the main objective is to stop the spreading and contain the spill. The next step is to remove the contaminates. I personally am not out there cleaning up or containing the spill. It would be nice to have some kind of progress report with data and numbers so that I, personally, can form my own opinion of how this release is being handled. I think there is to much talking and not enough doing going on in this situation. Also, is the effect on the beaches really that bad??? I have had friends that said the have been to Gulf Shores and they say it is not as bad as the media is making it out to be. So, this leads me to further question the extensiveness of this situation and how bad it really is. Not just how bad it is made out to be.
Nyssa. You made more sence than any one else.
Why thank you, You just made my day :)
Interesting, the original piece on this was titled "Red Tape Slows Gulf Clean-Up" or something equally ridiculous and had hundreds of angry comments that government was at the heart of this problem. Now, we find out the government scientists and bureaucrats were right and there are 15 comments and the story is buried 3 or 4 clicks in. I see MSNBC is going the "fair and balanced" route these days.
instead of just bitchin why arent the people who live along these beaches out there doing somthing???
I think Bobby was deprived as a child of playing on the beach and building sand castles. "8-10 footers" are huge for Lake Erie and yet the beach protection barriers are built with Rocks...Big Rocks. Go figure.