NEW ORLEANS — A giant dredge boat and its support vessels are now working around the clock — racing to raise an underwater barrier as a saltwater wedge flows up the Mississippi River.
Tuesday, the leading edge of the salt was located near Jesuit Bend in Plaquemines Parish, about 20 river miles south of New Orleans.
“Back in July, we built this underwater levee, essentially from bank to bank at a negative 55 elevation,” USACE Operations Manager Heath Jones said.
Saltwater topped the sill last week. Now the Army Corps of Engineers is raising the depth of the barrier another 25 feet. It’s expected to take about three weeks to complete the project.
“We’re filling in from the bank toward the middle, leaving the shipping channel open, about a 620-foot section in the middle, which is going to allow one-way, deep draft navigation to continue,” Jones said.
Raising the underwater barrier will only slow the upriver progression of the saltwater wedge. The saltwater is now expected to reach many New Orleans-area drinking water intakes by mid to late October.
“This is one piece of the mitigation strategy,” Jones said. “This piece will slow the wedge down by about two weeks.”
That gives the Corps and area leaders more time to put plans in place to mitigate the impact of saltwater intrusion.
A water treatment plant in Port Sulphur, out since Hurricane Ida hit two years ago, just came back online.
“Friday, we finally got it pushing water to residents in the lower end,” Plaquemines Councilman Mitch Jurisich said.
Jurisich says the plant can now mix and treat water, some coming from Belle Chasse, giving folks in the Boothville-Venice area some relief from the impacts of salty water.
“People getting sick, people with skin irritations and stuff, now we’re looking up,” Jurisich said. “We’ve still got to beat the saltwater to Belle Chasse and hopefully we can get everything in place prior to that.”
Plaquemines is also preparing its water plants to receive barge water from the Corps and for the arrival of special filters capable of taking salt out of saltwater.
Text WATER to 504-529-4444 for the latest updates on the saltwater intrusion emergency.
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