Just a year after the BP oil spill crippled Louisiana’s oyster industry, the fishermen face a new problem. Engineers are set to divert freshwater from the rising Mississippi River into the salty waters where the shellfish grow, potentially killing them. To protect people, homes and businesses along the big river, the Army Corps of Engineers plans to open at least one spillway, sending water out of the river. The tactic may ease pressure on levees, but it will almost certainly kill shellfish, too. Fourth-generation oysterman Shane Bagala became worried when he heard the corps was considering opening a spillway. “I’m very concerned because I’m just getting back to work now for the first time since the oil spill. Now it looks like something else might be threatening us,” he says.
The corps plans Monday to open the Bonnet Carre Spillway, built about 30 miles northwest of New Orleans in response to the great flood of 1927. The spillway diverts river water to brackish Lake Pontchartrain, and from there it flows east into the fertile fishing and oyster grounds of Lake Borgne and the Mississippi Sound, and ultimately the Gulf of Mexico. The corps is also considering opening the Morganza Spillway, about 35 miles northwest of Baton Rouge: It diverts river water into the Atchafalaya Basin and hasn’t been opened since 1973. Mike Voisin, an owner of an oyster processing and sales business southwest of New Orleans, says Morganza’s opening would devastate oyster harvesting grounds that largely avoided damage from the oil spill. “If Morganza opens, I assure you there will be significant [oyster] mortalities,” he says.
