00:00 The New Orleans area is in danger of saltwater intrusion.
00:05 Saltwater from the Gulf of Mexico could kind of back into the New Orleans area, flowing
00:09 back into the Mississippi River, threatening drinking water and safety around New Orleans.
00:14 So the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is working to stop that from happening before October.
00:19 Matt Rowe is a public affairs specialist and joins us now with the Army Corps of Engineers.
00:23 Matt, thank you so much for making time.
00:25 Absolutely.
00:26 Well, Matt, why is this a danger and what can happen when saltwater kind of creeps up
00:31 into the freshwater drinking sources?
00:35 This is a danger because a lot of the water intakes along the Mississippi River and the
00:40 parishes that sit in south Louisiana are not equipped to process water with a high chloride
00:46 level.
00:47 So as water from the Gulf of Mexico does seep up into the Mississippi River, they don't
00:54 have the ability to process that water into municipal drinking water.
01:00 So what is the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers doing regarding a levy that was created to
01:05 combat these low water levels?
01:07 When we see situations of low water on the Mississippi River coming down without enough
01:12 force behind it to keep the Gulf of Mexico at bay, we do construct an underwater sill,
01:18 which is essentially an underwater levy.
01:21 The base of it is wider than the top in an effort to slow down progression of the saltwater
01:27 as it moves upriver.
01:30 We've started construction to augment the existing sill that was in place earlier in
01:36 July and we're going to raise the sides of that up about 20 more feet while keeping the
01:42 center line open for shipping and navigation on the Mississippi River.
01:47 And the Mississippi River may continue to fall over the next few weeks with relatively
01:51 dry conditions for many areas upstream.
01:53 So what additional work needs to happen at this point?
01:56 So in addition to augmenting the sill that we built in July, the Corps of Engineers is
02:01 in the process to barge water downstream to the impacted treatment facilities.
02:08 They'll be able to blend that with water from the river to bring those chloride levels down
02:12 to a treatable level.
02:14 And what kind of volume of water might be transported in this case?
02:20 The Corps of Engineers, we're working right now to see what barges we have on hand.
02:26 Could be millions of gallons a day to some of the treatment facilities that are going
02:30 to be impacted by the saltwater.
02:32 And Matt, how often does this happen?
02:33 I mean, you remember it comes back from last fall where we had low water levels for the
02:38 Mississippi.
02:39 I suspect it doesn't necessarily happen every year.
02:42 So historically, how are we stacking up here?
02:47 Historically we've seen saltwater come this far up the Mississippi River about every 10
02:50 to 12 years.
02:53 The Corps of Engineers has to build the underwater sill as a mitigation to the deep draft ship
02:58 channel in the Mississippi River.
03:00 So the first time it was constructed was 1988.
03:03 Then we saw this saltwater intrusion again in 1999, 2012, and then last year and this
03:09 year.
03:10 So that's the historic part with this event of having two low water years where a sill
03:15 has needed to be constructed.
03:17 We'll be rooting for rain upstream as we move on through the next few weeks.
03:20 Matt Rowe, Public Affairs Specialist for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
03:24 Thanks again so much, Matt.
03:27 Thank you.
03:27 [BLANK_AUDIO]
Comments