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Last week, G. Paul Kemp, a former professor of marine science at Louisiana State University and current vice president of the National Audubon Society's Louisiana Coastal Initiative, sent a memo to the Environmental Protection Agency proposing an additional strategy, which calls for using upstream dams to increase the flow of the Mississippi River into the Gulf. Kemp says the river is "the biggest tool in the toolbox" when it comes to keeping oil out Louisiana's swamps and marshes, which make up nearly 40 percent of the nation's wetlands. The water level can be raised using large concrete dams, called the Old River Control Structure, which sit 315 miles upstream from the river's mouth. These dams, which are maintained by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, control flow between the Mississippi and a smaller tributary to the west called the Atchafalaya River. Usually, they direct about 70 percent of the water down the Mississippi, with the remaining 30 percent diverted to the Atchafalaya. Kemp's plan calls for a gradual daily increase in the amount directed to the Mississippi, so that over the course of 10 days the river's proportion would increase to about 81 percent—maintaining the approximate level of the river in May. He is also looking into manipulating additional dams even further upstream.
What? A real idea that will probably end up causing more problems than it prevents and creates an even greater ecological disaster? Say it ain't so!
