Question for John in La. Why all the canals in the Bayous

Bayous Seem to be full of canals what is purpose and the History. You are the only person I know in that area anymore.
Ron

I believe the oil companies had a lot to do with that and the army corp to control flooding also. straighten the river to control the channel for barge shipping up and down the Mississippi.

Ron
To a person not from here a bayou and a canal would be the same thing so I really do not fully understand your question.

A bayou is a extremely slow-moving stream or river.
A canal is a mad made water way used for drainage or to get boat traffic into a swamp area.

I will have to assume you are using bayou to describe wetland or a swamp area.

Yes there are many canals dug threw out the swamp.
It first started with logging. They dug canals to get heavy machinery in and set up a log pull boat. As the trees were cut; they would drag the logs threw the swamp to the canal with a large winch on the pull boat. This carved large spirals into the swamp that you can still see today in aerial photos.





Then came the oil industry. To get large boats in to set up oil rigs they dug many large canals.



Among other things this is what devastated our coast. There is a big law suit going on right now because in the oil company contract it says they would fill in the canals after they were no longer needed. That never happened.

These canals allow salt water in killing fresh water plants and trees. With out the plants wave action and storms erode the land taking our storm protection away. No buffer from storm surge anymore.

A little off topic but still a major contributor to swamp erosion is the practice of putting levees along the Mississippi.

This is a very "hits home" topic for me so I tried to keep it short and sweet to prevent a post poof.
If I say what I really think this would go poof.

yep, mainly the oil companies digging canals for pipe lines. also some left from the timber boom in the early 1900's. both have worked to speed up coastal erosion and saltwater intrusion.

That is one of the most interesting and informative answers I have seen. The pictures really drive home the point. I have noticed patterns similar to those in woodlots up north here including my own. Instead of canals it would be a "two track" road. We don't necessarily have the water patterns that your pictures show but you can still see it in the new growth. This is only where they did not clear cut, of course. Hope you get some help with your issues down there!

To John in La.
Its been several years since I have been in your neck of the woods.
Do the oil, and timber people still lay down corduroy roads to get in and oot of the swamps?

Extremely interesting. Around Charleston most of the swampy areas have been mined for phosphates around the turn of the century. Miles and miles of dredge cuts. Looks like an enormous plow went thru leaving 10 to 20 ft. beds. now covered with trees you can see them clearly in the fall when the leaves are gone.
Ron

Dave the sad part is all these guys with their college education think they have a plan to cure the problem.
A talk radio station had some of them on talking about it. Talking about how many Billions of dollars it would cost to fix it.

I called in and told them I work cheap. Give me 25% of the money and with a few cases of dynamite I will fix the problem as the levees on the Mississippi is the root cause of our problems.

Nothing works better than nature. And the natural process is for the river to overspill its banks during spring floods.

The Mississippi river wants to turn and go down the Atchafalaya River.



The corp spends mega bucks each year to force the Mississippi down its present path with a dam we call the old river structure.



They use it to put 70% of the water down the Mississippi and 30% of the water down the Atchafalaya.



They about lost it in a spring flood in the early 70's when the water flow was so great it was undermining the concrete channels.

They use interlocking mats now to make a road threw a swamp.

Clive Cussler wrote a book where they tried just that- blasting the structures between the rivers, and blowing the bottom out of a large vessel in the Mississippi to force the water down the Atchafalaya.

I"ve also read that the corps of engineers also had a plan for sea walls and gates and spillways designed to keep storm surge out of Lake Ponchatrain. And if the storm surge did manage to get into the lake, it would overflow into the swamps, saving New Orleans. And would have saved a lot of flooding back in 2005. But the skeeter lovers and tree huggers sued and stopped it because they"d drown the frogs.

But isn"t flooding a natural part of the life cycle of a swamp?

John, very interesting answer to this topic. Hope the courts rule that these companies that inflict environmental damage in their drilling, mining, logging, etc activities must repair the damage. Here in this part of Minnesota, there is considerable sand mining. The company involved was required to have a restoration plan in place in order to get their mining permit- so far, they have done a wonderful job- the restored areas are nicer now than they were originally. Years ago, there was considerable gravel and limestone mining. These companies didn't do any restoration leaving eyesores, and some environmental damage, but nothing compared to the saltwater issues you face in Louisiana. Hope it works out sooner rather than later. --Rand

To the best of my knowledge flooding is a normal part of the life cycle of a swamp. Be it from rivers rising or just the result of being at the end of a large watershed. Our native frogs up here would be in trouble without it. Spring runoffs create the temporary pools that they breed in. Same can be said for a lot of species.

So am I correct in understanding that the reduction in flow to the Atchafalaya created by the man made structures on the Mississippi (as pictured) is restricting the ability of the river to cleanse the bayou of excess salinity? And this, like you said, harms the plant species that fight erosion? Likely is also harming fish and amphibians that cannot handle salt water. Only in the case of natural resource harvesting would this be allowed. All rules seem made to be broken when that kind of money is at stake. We have companies operating in Michigan that do open pit gravel mining. No one wants it near their property. Many have tried to fight them, don't know of any that have won.

Now that this post has run a while I will add....

We do not have to worry about the suit to fix environmental damage done by the oil companies.
Our great governor (Bobby Jindal) has signed a bill that will kill the lawsuits against oil, gas companies.

Oh did I mention his brother Nikesh Jindal is an attorney for a company that represents BP.
Politics at its worst

The river has changed course many times over the years. It fills in a area with sediment and then changes course to a easier course filling that area in.
Just about everything below I10/I12 is sediment fill from the Mississippi.



This process builds land and supports a eco system we know.
By putting levees on the Mississippi we force it to take one course. Look at Louisiana and you will see a long stretch of land the Mississippi has built until it reached the continental shelf. Now all sediment is dumped right off the shelf into deep water so there is no way for it to build new land.



When sediment builds in the river we dredge it and rather than using this sediment we just dump it into the water column where the swift river moves it farther down the river.



One big lobbyist for river levees is the oyster industry. Oysters need salinity.

A city near me did take some action. They were dumping sewage plant water into a river. Since it was a small banked river it was showing high levels of nutrients the tree huggers could complain about.
So they built a pipe line several miles long to a swamp area. The fresh water cleanses the swamp pushing out salt water and provides needed nutrients the swamp plants need.
But we are talking a thousand acres when we have a entire coast to save.

They say we are losing a land mass equal to a football field a hour; every hour; 24 hours a day due to coastal erosion.

Like I said this is a sore subject for me that really hits home.

I have nothing helpful to add as I don't now squat about that part of the country, but I've never heard a single solitary GOOD thing said about the Army Corps of Engineers, which I understand has nothing to do with the Army at all anymore. Other than a hate of moving water, what do these guys accomplish? I just read they have ultimate authority of all water in the US. Don't know how accurate that is, but I could believe it.