Southeastern NEWS
Southeastern Louisiana University
Public Information Office
publicinfo@selu.edu
SLU 880, Hammond, LA 70402
504/549-2341/fax 504-549-2061
Date: 8/23/99
Contact: Christina Chapple 34a
Editors: Photos accompany release
SOUTHEASTERN'S JONES ISLAND BECOMES WETLANDS MITIGATION SITE
HAMMOND -- Southeastern Louisiana University wetlands at Pass Manchac have been
designated a mitigation site, a move that will finance the restoration of 180 acres of cypress
swamp, establish an endowment for environmental research, and provide new "service-learning"
opportunities for Southeastern students.
Southeastern recently signed a contract with Williams Energy Company to mitigate a
portion of Jones Island, located just east of Interstate 55 in St. John the Baptist Parish. The
federal Clean Water Act mandates that any developer who impacts a parcel of wetlands must
mitigate -- compensate -- for the loss of the wetlands' functions and values by restoring or
creating another wetlands area. Williams Energy is mitigating 360 wetland acres at a cost of
$900,000 in return for building a pipeline on wetlands between Sorrento and Gonzales.
Southeastern and a private mitigation site on the Blind River are splitting Williams'
mitigation money and acreage, said Michael Greene, director of the College of Arts and
Sciences' "Connections" program, which will oversee Southeastern's mitigation project.
Greene said Southeastern will use approximately $350,000 of its payment to plant 36,000
young cypress trees on Jones Island, donated to the university in 1996. Greene said the remaining
$100,000 of the mitigation funds will be used to establish an endowment that will support
research, faculty development grants, service-learning activities and other environmental
activities around the Lake Pontchartrain Basin.
Planting will begin in December 1999 and continue into March 2000, Greene said. He
said labor will be provided by a core of paid students, supplemented by high school and
community volunteers, students from universities participating in Southeastern's "Alternative
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SOUTHEASTERN MITIGATION -- Add One
Spring Break" program and by Southeastern students engaged in service-learning activities.
Through the concept of service-learning, which is being incorporated into a number of
Southeastern courses this fall, students participate in activities that both benefit the community
and enhance their understanding of course content.
Greene said Southeastern has been working for a number of years to get Jones Island and
other university-owned land on Pass Manchac designated as mitigation sites. Based at Turtle
Cove, Southeastern's environmental research station, university biologists have extensively
researched ways to best restore the Manchac area's cypress forest, which was clear cut because of
the demand for cypress lumber earlier this century. The forest's restoration would provide
habitat for a greater variety of wildlife and vegetation and would help stabilize the area's
threatened shoreline, Greene said.
"That whole Manchac area is projected to be gone in 50-60 years, given the current rates
of land loss," Greene said. "We can help that if we plant trees along those edges. The roots of
cypress trees hold the sediment better than do marsh plants that die back every year."
Greene said the cypress seedlings that students and volunteers will plant on Jones Island
currently are growing at the Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry's Columbia
Nursery and will be 3-4 foot saplings when the planting season arrives in December. Planting the
young trees in often inclement weather is hard work, he said, but he and other Southeastern
biologists such as Gary Shaffer have perfected a technique over the years to get the plants into
the ground efficiently and protect them against choking vegetation and foraging nutria.
Relays of workers will head out across the Pass Manchac marsh, he said, stepping high
over wilted vegetation and stepping carefully over soggy marshland patches.
"A misstep means you come home wet and dirty versus staying dry and relatively clean,"
Greene said.
The first wave of workers will tote heavy packs of yard-long, one-inch oak stakes and
three-inch white plastic tubes. Every five meters -- five giant steps -- they will jab a stake into the
ground, drop a tube and move on.
The second wave will heft long-handled wedge-type shovels and dozens of cypress
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SOUTHEASTERN MITIGATION -- Add Two
saplings with trunks the diameter of a man's thumb. At each stake, they will use the wedges to
squelch open a hole, will insert a little tree ... and will keep going.
The "tubers," Greene said, will come next. Their job is to retrieve a tube, slide it carefully
over a sapling, fasten and tighten the tube to the stake with a nylon wire and go on to the next.
Stepping, dropping, digging, planting, securing, restocking, repeating, the workers will
turn the marsh, tree-by-tree, back into a cypress swamp.
"By March of 2000, there will be 36,000 seedlings out there if we have to go all night
long," Greene said.
Not all of Jones Island has been found suitable for wetlands mitigation, Greene said. But
he hopes that an additional 300 acres will be used as a mitigation site in the future.
Meanwhile, a number of projects are highlighting Southeastern's commitment to
environmental projects. Thanks to the efforts of U.S. Rep. David Vitter, $1 million for Turtle
Cove
Environmental Research Station has been included in appropriation bills currently being
considered by
Congress. Turtle Cove Director Robert Hastings is working on the establishment of a visitors
center at Pass Manchac and internationally known wetlands ecologist Paul Keddy recently joined
the faculty as the Edward Schlieder Chair in Environmental Studies, Southeastern's first $1
million endowed chair.
"Initiatives like these, coupled with the environmental studies program we are
developing, will position Southeastern as an environmental and service-learning leader in this
region," said John Miller, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. "The willingness of
community volunteers to participate in these critical restoration efforts shows how important
environmental issues are to the local population. Southeastern wants to assist in these efforts and
help move Louisiana into a cleaner, healthier future environmental research, restoration and
education are the best ways for us to accomplish this."
-SLU-
This press release is available on the World Wide Web:
www.selu.edu/NewsEvents/PublicInfoOffice/newsf99.htm