More mats, less erosion

Published 12:30 am Sunday, April 21, 2019

CYPREMORT POINT — Recycled plastic bottles from last year’s Jazz Fest are helping fight coastal erosion along a section of shoreline in Vermilion Bay near the mouth of Quintana Canal.

On April 12, more than 100 students from Catholic High School in New Iberia, AMI Kids and 4-H Explorer Club members from East Feliciana and East Baton Rouge parishes met at Cypremort Point State Park and worked with volunteers from Coastal Conservation Association of Louisiana and Shell Oil to complete Phase II of the Floating Islands Restoration Project. The project was spearheaded by five local chapters of CCA-Louisiana, including the local Sugar Chapter, along with CCA’s National Habitat Building Program, the Building Conservation Trust.

They teamed up to plant approximately 25,000 square feet of new wetland habitat on mats from Martin Ecosystems created from recycled plastic bottles from the 2018 New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival presented by Shell. The volunteers planted three types of native plants — mangrove, seashore paspalum and smooth cord grass in the 8 foot x 20 foot BioHaven Floating Islands.

Those mats were carried to the water and towed to the east side of Vermilion Bay in The Cove south of Quintana Canal.

“The work you are doing today will help rebuild and preserve our coast for generations to come,” CCA-Louisiana president John Walther of Thibodaux told the volunteers.

“Louisiana is in a state of crisis, losing habitat across our coast at an alarming rate. By being here today, you have chosen to do something about that, and make a positive difference,” Walther said. “In addition, the new land you are building today will become great new habitat for fish and other marine life, and should become a great place to go fishing. One day, you will be on the water with your family, see these islands, and take pride in the fact you helped build them.”

New Iberian Chad Courtois, an active member of CCA-Louisiana’s Sugar Chapter, also praised the overall effort. He was on hand last May for a similar project at Cypremort Point State Park.

“It makes me so proud to be part of an organization like CCA who has become the Louisiana leader in building marine habitat. A lot of groups talk about getting things done,” Courtois said during the event, “but CCA actually follows through, as evidenced by all of the habitat we’ve built over the past few years. And there’s plenty more to come.”

The latest project was the 28th habitat project completed in recent years by CCA-Louisiana and their partners, a list that includes 23 artificial reefs and five marsh planting projects, at a cost of nearly $10 million. CCA-Louisiana’s next habitat projects will be a new artificial reef at South Marsh Island  233 to be named the “Ted Beaullieu Sr. Reef” and expansion of the “Big Jack Reef” in Calcasieu Lake.

Funding for the local project was provided by CCA’s Building Conservation Trust, Shell Oil, Entergy and Martin Ecosystems, as well as donations by CCA-Louisiana members. Youth volunteers were coordinated by the CCA-Louisiana Youth Outreach program in with the Irene W. and C.B. Pennington Foundation and the Magistro Family Foundation.

Katy Benson, a fourth-grade science teacher at CHS, said, “Our kids are having a blast today and are actually helping to rebuild our eroding marshland with their hard work.

“They learn about coastal erosion in our science classes at school and today they are out here helping to fix it. It’s awesome. This is service learning at its best.”

After the work was done, M&A Safety volunteers served a fried fish lunch to all the participants.

David Cresson, CCA-Louisiana executive director, said “CCA and the Building Conservation Trust are so blessed to have partners like Shell who make our extensive habitat work possible. Having all of the kids and volunteers out here today actually building new land for Louisiana is absolutely wonderful, and none of it would be possible without our partners.”

Last year, CCA-Louisiana officials and volunteers prepared and positioned 24 “floating island marsh” mats here on May 18. The mats were towed by three boats, placed end to end, roped off and anchored that afternoon in the gaps between and behind the rip-rap along the eastern side of The Cove.

That was the fourth such project undertaken by the largest conservation group in the Sportsman’s Paradise. The first project was completed in 2011 in Terrebonne Parish.

CCA-Louisiana officials noted that in the first three efforts to combat coastal erosion, the “floating island marsh” mats were outperforming the surrounding natural marsh, which resulted in 20,000 square feet of new marsh being created as of May 2018.

Cresson and Corry Landry of New Iberia,  CCA-Louisiana’s southwest regional director, have said over the past several months that last year’s local project also has been a success.