A lot of water under the bridge

Floodwaters are only the tip of iceberg in the battle over the largest private conservation project in the United States.

Long before Sieur d’Iberville’s visit to the region in 1699, farming the fertile land of Ascension Parish provided sustenance for generations of the Bayougoula tribe. During the 20th century, large landowners leveraged their holding with forestry, oil and gas leases, hunting and fishing licenses. However, since 1990s, the most lucrative enterprise has become converting large tracts into mitigation banks.

To qualify for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency program, landowners place conservation servitude on the land to protect it from any development in perpetuity, restore wetlands according to federal guidelines and sell those wetland credits to businesses to offset their unavoidable destruction of wetlands in other areas of the region.

Typically, South Louisiana banks typically range from 200 to 4,000 acres; each habitat unit they sell is usually comprised of two to four acres. The establishment of a mitigationbanking instrument takes an average of two to three years and costs $100,000 in consulting fees and an additional endowment to guarantee the bank remains viable. While the market fluctuates, wetlands credits now cost $57,000 per habitat unit.

When excessive flooding had thwarted the attempts to meet the Army Corps of Engineers’ criteria to establish a bank, landowners adjacent to Alligator Bayou commissioned a study by a wetlands consultant that alleged the closed locks drown the forest year-round rather than permitting it to flood seasonally.

While the closed locks were a bane for several landowners seeking mitigation bank approval, it was a boon for another Ascension landowner. By the time Frank Bonifay and Jim Ragland bought 1,500 acres in the Spanish Lake Basin to prevent the clear-cutting of an old growth cypress forest in Bluff Swamp, the gates had remained closed for 42 years. Nestled against the locks, Alligator Bayou Tours provided swamp boat excursions complemented by exhibits featuring live snapping turtles, 14-foot alligators and bobcats.

Besides creating an internationally renown eco swamp boat tour and educational tours including a curriculum developed with the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Ragland and Bonifay created a 901-acre national non-profit organization and the area’s first wetland mitigation bank. The existing environment lent itself to the development of rookeries and sanctuaries for abandoned bobcats and nuisance alligators relocated by the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries.

While business has been self-supporting, “It’s not about putting money in my pocket. If you have a whole bag of money and you don’t see the beauty of Louisiana, then you are a poor soul,” Bonifay says. “I do love Louisiana, and we have a treasure here as much as anywhere in the world. Our goal is to build a research and education center for the children. I want teach them about their cultural heritage, so they realize how blessed we are.”

Over the years, Ragland and Bonifay have fended off threats posed by an interstate extension, E. coli outbreak from prison sewerage, a hazardous waste recycling facility and an airport. Early on, Bonifay identified the drainage problem and presented Ascension Parish with a comprehensive plan for new locks at Alligator and Frog bayous and the dredging of the sediment to increase the outflow during seasonal flooding. The aim was to control water levels in the Spanish Lake Basin to protect landowners, hardwood forests and to restore the flooded, 80-acre Cypress Flats to a cypress-tupelo swamp.

Four parish administrations and 13 years later, the parish’s only progress was the installation of three drainage pipes. Still, Bonifay believed the council had finally approved $13 million allocation for the hydrology work, until he received news the locks would open.

It’s hard to say if the parish had made Bonifay’s improvements whether the current situation could have been averted. As with any environmental question from global warming, car emission standards to endangered species habitats, a consensus of action is rare among experts, and any action has an adverse affect upon one of the parties involved.

Natural Resource Professionals’ President Scott Nesbit, a Baton Rouge consultant with more than 20 years of expertise in wetlands issues, became involved in Ascension Parish drainage in 2007 at a local landowner’s behest. After heavy rains, the yards of South Ridge Road residents flooded; the parish wanted the neighboring landowner to cut through a ridge to allow the water to egress.

Nesbit’s findings determined the source of the problem to be the closed locks of Alligator Bayou rather than the ridge. When the landowners also sought to establish mitigation banks on their properties and the flooding issue again arose, they began to petition government officials to open the locks.

While their solutions to rectify the problems vary, Bonifay and Nesbit’s objective share common ground in the prevention of constant flooding of the forests and conservation. Both camps charge the other with presenting faulty facts—and worse—and remain well entrenched in their positions on the best way to manage the bayou.

Nesbit says conflict is inherent in the coexistence of ecotourism and mitigation banks, which are both mutually beneficial and mutually exclusive. “The experience enjoyed by tourists is mostly about the habitat and the animals that are fostered and supported by a wetland bank,” Nesbit explains. “There needs to be an isolated sense of wilderness. People want to feel like they’re out there. So you want to have a good wetland bank—and a big one—[to see] more types and diversity of wildlife.”

In granting credits and monitoring banks, the Army Corps of Engineers has strict criteria to control manmade disturbances that might be detrimental to wetlands or wildlife. “The Corps of Engineers has told us outright they’re going to deck anybody for excessive tourism within any of the banks. [Because it can] affect wildlife patterns. You can’t have a band playing every night. When excess people come in through these areas is they can hurt themselves, they can bring in four-wheelers and get drunk and hang out in wildlife areas because there’s nobody out there.

“Sometimes to get the experience for tourism, you have to get into the middle of [the wetlands mitigation area], and that’s actually a problem. Ecotourism is that you want that experience. And a mitigation banker can’t have that experience. It’s an impact.”

Rather than a boat, Nesbit envisions ecotourism along the lines of Tickfaw State Park, Fausse Pointe, Cat Island Conservancy, Lake Flato or Tunica Hills. “We have big plans with what we want to do once it’s restored,” he says. “We definitely want to bring people in but we don’t want to put them in a big boat and try to coral them in one area. It’s too many people in one spot.”

So, while the dispute began over neighboring landowners’ rights to leverage profit from their property, it has evolved into a debate about best practices of wetlands and wildlife management. At issue: What is the ideal state for a natural environment? Should it revert to the pristine condition before civilization encroached even if it means disrupting the balance of nature that has adapted and flourished in the manmade environment?

Bonifay’s priority is to protect the existing ecosystem; Nesbit favors recreating the grandeur of the 17th century wetlands and wildlife.

“Our clients see the opportunity to restore the basin into fully functional wetlands and the key to that is restore the hydrologic connection to Bayou Manchac,” Nesbit explains.

And there’s a lot at stake. “What’s so beautiful right here,” Nesbit says pointing to a map of mitigation banks around Spanish Lake, “is this is one of the largest private conservation projects in the United States. It’s really a great thing. Right in our own backyard.”

One indisputable fact is that in the nearly six weeks since the locks opened, for the first time in 50 years, the perennially flooded forests of the Spanish Lake Basin have begun to dry.

While the landscape isn’t pretty, Nesbit has been encouraged by recent visits to the area. “It looks worse because it’s had a blanket of water on it for 50 years. But the seedlings have started to regenerate,” he says. “In a couple of months, it’s going to look like a totally different place. We see a great improvement in wildlife moving into the area that haven’t been there since it’s just been an aquatic habitat. Wait until the end of the summer. People aren’t going to believe the difference. It’s already sprouted out.”

And the type of plant life proliferating is only one of Bonifay’s concerns. “The saw grass has taken over—Ridge Road, the oil fields, the St. Gabriel gyp[sum] pile and the two prisons. Without management, there will be a massive flood if a hurricane comes,” he says. “We’ve lost the gators. They’ve migrated to Bluff Swamp. The fish are gone. The rookery birds have gone. The eagles are looking around seeing where everything has gone. The rosy spoonbills circle and fly away.”

Nesbit counters the alligator exodus will only advance the restoration of diverse wildlife—deer, turkeys, raccoons, etc.—that populated the basin when the explorer Iberville arrived in 1699. “There’s going to be a rectification of the habitat, of the wildlife,” he concedes. “You’re going to get some real fat birds because they are going to eat lots of snakes and lots of small reptiles. Alligators [are] very mobile. Your wildlife will go down for the first year or two and then it will build up slowly. But, over years, it becomes a much more diverse and sustainable habitat.”

Even though his recommendations on opening the locks have been followed, his client’s chance of receiving mitigation bank improved and his team has discovered evidence of a more diverse wildlife system returning, Nesbit’s victory is not absolute. “We’ve gotten hate mail; President Ourso has gotten terrible email. I really feel it’s gotten to be a public relations nightmare. We’re not going to win the paparazzi here. It’s much sexier to say, ‘There’s going to be an alligator apocalypse out there; everything’s going to be eating each other and we’re going to be shutting down.’ We don’t feel that way at all.”

And neither does Ascension Parish President Martinez. While he’s never been on an Alligator Bayou swamp boat tour, the president says, “They [Alligator Bayou] can still have a section for animals and other things. I don’t think they’ll be out of business.”

While the swamp boat has been left high and dry since May 7, “We can still do private events at the pavilion and walking tours, but no one is calling,” Bonifay says. “People have suggested smaller boats. The boats would be a $200,000 to $300,000 investment. Then, there’s money to insure them and run a staff of boat operators. It’s an expensive business option.

“But, it’s not about running the boat. Most of all I want to save the basin. It’s for not just for the duck hunters and the fisherman, the children, but for everyone. We are now in a state of disaster.”

Not only are the animals who populated the area migrating, so are the tourists and the revenue. And that trend worries Ramon Gomez, project and events manager for the Ascension Parish Tourism Commission, which estimates for every tourism dollar generates another $6 to $9 for the state. As a member of a 10-parish Southeast Louisiana Gumbo marketing consortium, Gomez says the swamp tour provides an essential item for attracting conventions and tour groups to the region.

“Alligator Bayou is has been one of the top attractions for quite a few years,” Gomez says. “With Frank, Jim and [tour guide] Jamie [Brassett], you don’t have to be with them but a few minutes to know they love what they do and they love the environment. They could be standing 40 feet in a tree, and you could come away with a memorable experience.

“They have taken responsibility for that land and they are delighted to that so they can share with the next generation the importance of maintaining that environment. It creates an awareness of the quality of life for our own residents. We have to do that before we invite other people to come in and have a good time.”

Even more importantly, Gomez says, “My wife is a teacher. A lot of her kids don’t know from whence they came. Kids are jaded today—they’re focused on a video games or the mall. The swamp boat tour really gets their attention. What better legacy than to plant those seeds in those little minds, so they can get involved in conservation before it all gets lost. And, now, they’ll all know about floodgates and drainage. A lot of people have been educated since all this has come about. ”

Martinez hopes a new report by the Shaw Group presentation will illuminate a compromise. “I’d like for everybody to be happy: to solve the drainage problem for the landowners and let Mr. Bonifay run his business,” Martinez says. “I’d like to see all come to an agreement and go back to normalcy. These things seem to blow over after a few months, this one has been around for a while.”

For a compromise to work, “It would have to maintain the existing habitat at the lowest point in the basin [Cypress Flats], keep the water at 3.8 feet, dredge the bayou and increase the lock capacity to drain water through an exit hole,” Bonifay explains.

While his clients might entertain closing the locks in the winter and keeping enough water in Alligator Bayou to float the boat, Nesbit says, “Cypress Flats can’t be used as a breeding facility for alligators. If he [Bonifay] wants to keep Cypress Flats flooded, there’s nothing we can do. We can’t go for water being held back artificially because it means that our landowners are impaired. We’d be subsidizing Frank’s operation when he has plenty of alternatives. Alligator Bayou could offer to buy a servitude…That could be a meeting point.”

Click here to read a Adrian Hirsch’s story about the Alligator Bayou flood dispute.

Click here for this week’s Creature Feature.

Click here for this week’s City Lynx.