Corps recommends closing MR-GO to Congress

The Army Corps of Engineers will recommend to Congress that the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet be closed with a rock dike at Bayou la Loutre, a project that would cost $24.7 million and could be completed 170 days after the start of construction.

"Thank goodness," said Sidney Coffee, chairman of the state's Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority. "This is what the state has advocated for quite some time."

The decision -- which still requires financing from Congress -- would put an end to shipping on the controversial shortcut from the Gulf of Mexico to the Industrial Canal in New Orleans. The channel has been blamed both for the erosion of wetlands along Lake Borgne and for expediting hurricane storm surge into Chalmette and New Orleans.

MR-GO has been closed to most ships since Katrina because the storm silted it in. Several shippers with operations on the Industrial Canal or Gulf Intracoastal Waterway have already relocated to the Mississippi River or left the New Orleans area.

Fishing vessels also would have to find alternate ways around the closure, which will include short onshore berms connecting the plug to a ridge formed by the southern banks of the bayou.

The long-awaited recommendation is contained in the final version of a congressionally mandated report and legislative environmental impact statement made public on Friday and available on the Web at http://mrgo.usace.army.mil.

The plug's top would be 12 feet wide and 7 feet above sea level, and the structure would be built with 391,500 tons of stone. It will be maintained at a height of at least 4 feet above sea level.

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