NEWSROOM
City
Park Restoration Moves Forward
December
20, 2006
Working with
volunteers to restore New Orleans’ City Park has become
an ongoing labor of love for two LSU AgCenter employees.
On December
8-9, LSU AgCenter hurricane recovery coordinator Mark Schexnayder
and Amanda Hardesty, the recovery volunteer coordinator with the
LSU AgCenter and Louisiana Sea Grant program, worked with nearly
500 volunteers to restore plant material that will improve water
quality in the lakes at City Park.
Schexnayder
said the volunteers were members of a group who were in town for
the Restore America’s Estuaries national conference. "We
were contacted by the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana,
the local arm of the organization, to help in coordinating this
restoration effort," he said.
The plan for
the volunteers was to plant vegetation around the lakes in the
park that would stabilize the shoreline and improve water quality.
They also would provide additional fish habitats so the aquatic
life could be improved in the area. He said the volunteers were
helping to restore nearly 5,000 feet of lakeside shoreline in
the park.
In addition
to putting in new plants around the lake, Schexnayder said the
timing couldn’t have been much better for the Louisiana
Wildlife and Fisheries Department when the agency supplied more
than 200 pounds of fingerlings to help build up the fish population
in the lakes.
Schexnayder
said he has been involved in restocking the lakes for the past
three years, but all of that work was wiped out by Hurricane Katrina.
Since the
storm, he has helped the park secure a Wallop-Breaux grant through
the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries that has allowed
faculty members at the University of New Orleans Biology Department
to monitor the salinity of the water and estimate how much the
fish population decreased because of flooding.
He said the
lakes are being restocked with redear and bluegill sunfish, largemouth
bass and white crappie.
"We’re
hoping that this and future restocking efforts will put us about
five years ahead of where we would have been without it,"
Schexnayder said.
Hardesty recently
coordinated 60 volunteer students from Michigan State University
during the week of December 17. The students helped with restoration
of the Pelican Greenhouse where wetland plants will be propagated
to continue restoration of the park’s lakes.
Hardesty works
with a variety of groups and agencies to make sure plant numbers
are sufficient and with park personnel to make sure locations
are correct.
"We also
work with the park to secure a grant to construct a wetland plant
production facility to meet the long-term needs of the park and
other local waterways in need of rehabilitation," she said.
Besides the
damage caused by saltwater flooding after the Katrina levee breaches,
Hardesty said, another consideration was to help control erosion
in the area that was once part a golf course where heavy mowing
damaged a large section.
In addition
to the Michigan volunteers, a group of students from the University
of Missouri at Columbia will be under her guidance beginning December
30.
"These
students will work with the fishermen down in St. Bernard Parish,
helping them to get back to where they can have soft-shell crab
production facilities back on line in the spring," she said.
This work is being partially funded through www.marketumbrella.org
by a grant from the Kellogg Foundation.
Schexnayder
says volunteer coordination is an ongoing process that helps get
the city back up and running at a faster pace. The next big project
is having a freshwater well put in to help keep the lakes’
salinity levels low.
"We already
have a group that we’re working with on funding for this
project. We’re just waiting right now for the green light,"
he explained. "Once this is done, we will be on our way to
full fisheries management and habitat improvement for City Park’s
lagoon system, the natural bayous and Bayou St. John."
The next step
will be to restart the environmental education programs that were
in place before Hurricane Katrina and expand them to meet the
needs of the community.
Persons interested
in volunteering should call 504-838-1170 or visit the Web site
www.we-kare.org.
To learn more
about the variety of LSU AgCenter programs related to hurricane
preparation and recovery, visit www.lsuagcenter.com.
###
Contacts:
Mark Schexnayder
at (504) 838-1170 or mschexnayder@agcenter.lsu.edu
Amanda Hardesty at (504) 838-1170 or hardesty@lsu.edu
Writer: Johnny Morgan at (225) 578-8484 or jmorgan@agcenter.lsu.edu
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