The New Orleans Engineer District is to assemble an underwater sill throughout the mattress of the Mississippi River channel to stop additional upriver development of salt water from the Gulf of Mexico.
“We have coordinated closely with our state and local partners as well as incorporated lessons learned from last year’s low water season,” stated Col. Cullen Jones, commander of the USACE New Orleans District. “We are confident we will see the same level of success with this saltwater barrier that we achieved with previous efforts.”
The Mississippi River’s quantity of water has fallen to a stage that permits salt water from the Gulf of Mexico to intrude upstream. The intrusion of salt water into the river is a naturally occurring periodic situation as a result of the underside of the riverbed between Natchez, MS, and the Gulf of Mexico is under sea stage. Denser salt water strikes upriver alongside the underside of the river beneath the much less dense contemporary water flowing downstream. Under regular circumstances, the downstream move of the river prevents vital upriver development of the salt water. However, in instances of maximum low quantity water move, unimpeded salt water can journey upriver and threaten municipal consuming water and industrial water provides.
To arrest the upriver motion of the salt water and cut back the chance to freshwater intakes, USACE will assemble an underwater barrier sill close to Myrtle Grove, La., utilizing sediment dredged from an space designated for this objective. The sill will take roughly two weeks to finish however will reveal advantages upfront of completion. The sill has been constructed on 4 earlier events in 1988, 1999, 2012 and once more in 2022.
The Corps constructed an analogous underwater sill in October 2022 at river mile 64, close to Myrtle Grove, La., to arrest the development of salt water intrusion throughout that yr’s low water season. That specific sill eroded away when contemporary water from the Mississippi River pushed the saltwater wedge again down the river to the Gulf of Mexico.
