A $10 million project to fill in part of Bayou Trepagnier in Norco could begin early next year, according to officials from Motiva Enterprises and state environmental officials. The bayou, a shallow stream in the LaBranche Wetlands, drained the Shell Norco oil refinery, and its predecessor, New Orleans Refining Co., for 75 years. Company officials rerouted the flow in...
A $10 million project to fill in part of Bayou Trepagnier in Norco could begin early next year, according to officials from Motiva Enterprises and state environmental officials.
Bayou Trepagnier, a shallow stream in the LaBranche Wetlands, drained the Shell Norco oil refinery, and its predecessor, New Orleans Refining Co., for 75 years.The bayou, a shallow stream in the LaBranche Wetlands, drained the Shell Norco oil refinery, and its predecessor, New Orleans Refining Co., for 75 years. Company officials rerouted the flow in 1995 after years of protests by environmental groups concerned that the bayou is a threat to the health of the 18,000-acre LaBranche Wetlands.
The refinery's current owner, Motiva Enterprises, reached an agreement with the state Department of Environmental Quality to clean up a 4,500 foot stretch of the bayou closest to Airline Drive in 2008.
The company is currently conducting a pilot project to determine the best way to solidify the soil at the bottom of the waterway, then cap it with clay, said Oliver Boyd, a geologist who is managing the project for the refinery. Company officials hope to begin the remediation project in March, Boyd said.
Motiva is a joint venture between Shell and Saudi Refining Inc.
The agreement on the cleanup came after more than a decade of talks between environmental groups and Shell. The plan called for Motiva to solidify the soil in the bayou so that contaminants could not migrate away from the site, and to conduct a study of the northern part of the bayou, which test results show is less contaminated.
The results of that study indicates that the soil in the northern section of the bayou does not pose an environmental threat, according to the DEQ.
The project also will include a "clean corridor," a section in which all contaminated soil is removed, for possible use for a long-discussed diversion of Mississippi River water into the 18,000-acre marsh.
That diversion idea, which isn't part of the Motiva settlement, is seen as way to reverse damage caused by saltwater intrusion from Lake Pontchartrain. But concerns about moving contamination from the bayou to other parts of the marsh has been an obstacle to the project.
After reviewing the results of a related study, the state Department of Environmental Quality has determined that the remaining 11,000 feet of the bayou does not pose an "unacceptable risk" to the health of humans, plants or wildlife.
John Haik, the DEQ's site manager for the remediation project, said the study shows that no further remediation of the bayou is needed.
"There are some people who might have an issue with that, but that's what the science is telling us," Haik said Monday.
One of those people is John Lopez of the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation.
Lopez praised some features of the project, particularly the clean corridor. But said he objects to the DEQ's decision to treat the banks of the bayou nearest Airline Drive as an upland, rather than a wetland, where the standards are stricter.
"From a technical standpoint, that might be correct, but if you look at the overall area, we feel it should be treated as a wetland," he said.
The foundation hasn't filed comments on the issue yet but plans to do so, Lopez said.
The DEQ's deadline for such comments is 12:30 p.m. Aug. 17 on the draft decision document on remedies for the northern section of the bayou known as "Operable Unit 2." The decision document also covers the spoil banks of the bayou.
The bayou has long been a drainpipe for the refinery, starting with the expansion of the New Orleans Refining Co, which began using it in 1920. The Norco community is named after the company, which was acquired by Shell nine years later, according to settlement documents.
Over the years, the stream became contaminated with lead and other metals, and became the focus of environmental groups for the past two decades because of its beauty and its proximity to New Orleans.
Boyd said the bayou is about 2 feet deep, but sediment will be mixed and solidified to as much as 8 feet deep. The restoration approved by the DEQ for the southern section of the bayou involves pumping water into plastic bladders to create dry cells from which the soil will be dredged, solidifies, then covered with clay from the spillway, Boyd said.
Then one bladder will be emptied, moved downstream and the process will begin again.
When the project is complete, that section of the bayou will be buried for good.
Boyd said the company's tests show that while there are metals in the soil, tests and autopsies of wildlife show that they are tightly bound in the soil and not migrating into plants or animals.
Mark Davis, director of Tulane University's Institute for Water Resources Law and Policy, said he wrote his first letter to state officials about the bayou in 1991 when he worked for the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation.
He said Tuesday that the remediation project should be used as a lesson in bringing together multiple stakeholders to solve a problem.
"What we ran into is that the agencies that were dealing with the remediation weren't involved in the diversion and the people who have to sign off on the diversion assumed that the bayou would always be contaminated," he said.
"Trepagnier is the lens through which we should be looking through for the remediation for the BP spill, " he said. "The big lesson is that it shouldn't take so long to do so little."