Coastal restoration projects; Transformation of the coastline by Katrina
Donald Clement by Mark Gibson, 2013; 4700.2355
Click photo to enlarge
Comparison of South Pass, Mississippi River, before and after Katrina. USGS.
TEMPESTS:
Storms in the Archives
Mark Gibson: So you mention your dad's [Army] Corps of Engineers experience. Did the Corps of
Engineers at the time, did they realize that what they were doing would have effects like we're
seeing today? Or were they ignorant?
Donald Clement: They were clearly not ignorant. Most of the projects that were done were to
help with coastal erosion and to build back certain areas of land that were being depleted by
coastal erosion. There's a Davis Crevasse project that diverts water from the river into marshlands,
which actually takes the mud deposits from the river water and it flows into the marshland as silt
and it backfills the marsh which actually helps the marsh. There's also another one down in
Caernarvon which is around the Violet area and it does the same thing: it backfills silt deposits
from the Mississippi River, placing sand in the marsh and backfilling. So it does help and they have
several projects like that in the river that have [been] done to help with coastal erosion.
Gibson: You've had a long family history connection to the river. In your family's
experience, has there been a feeling that this is speeding up or getting worse? Or has it always
been kind of a constant issue?
Clement: It's always been a constant battle to be proactive to help it. I don't know that
they can do anything to beat Mother Nature, because Mother Nature is just amazing. You look at the
way Hurricane Katrina changed the shoreline of the whole southern part of the United States from the
edge of, I would say, probably Florida to Texas. All the way up and down that coastline there have
been major changes in the coastline. She just made such a change. It really devastated the marsh
areas.