Flotilla of barges _ ‘the Cajun navy’ _ to serve as oil barricade off Louisiana coast

Flotilla of barges used as La. oil barricade

GRAND ISLE, La. — Mired in a daily battle against the oil soiling Louisiana’s shorelines, marshes and wetlands, locals in this barrier island town are pushing ahead with a novel plan to block the crude’s path with a flotilla of barges.

“The Cajun navy,” Grand Isle Mayor David Camardelle calls it.

They’re using the barges to partially block five passes where water from the Gulf of Mexico flows between barrier islands into Barataria Bay, an ecological treasure trove of shrimp nurseries, oyster beds, pelican rookeries and fertile fishing grounds. Barges were moved into the first of the passes last week.

In Florida, Gov. Charlie Crist announced plans to use barges to create a similar blockade of Destin Pass on the Panhandle.

Oil has already seeped into Barataria Bay, where a rainbow sheen coats huge swaths of the water’s surface and thick patches of gooey crude cling to marsh islands. The goal is to keep the damage from getting any worse as the blown well spews hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil into the Gulf each day.

“We’ve got to stop any more from coming in,” said Jefferson Parish Council Chairman John Young.

However, bad weather can interfere with the barge placements. Chris Roberts, another Jefferson councilman, said rough seas generated by Tropical Storm Alex across the Gulf had force removal of barges that were being placed in Pass Abel, just off Grand Isle. The barges were to be arranged in a V-shape to trap oil in the tip as it’s pushed forward by tides and currents. Vaccuum trucks aboard the barges will suck it up.

The barges were being secured with pylons hammered into the Gulf seabed in about 10 feet of water. It was unclear Monday morning when they would be redeployed.

“The barges will have to be removed every time bad weather threatens and seas are high,” Roberts said in an e-mail. “The pilings can be left and it will take 24 hours to re-mobilize.”

Roberts said the removal of the barges demonstrated the need for another plan favored by Jefferson Parish and state officials, the placement of rocks in the passes. The Army Corps of Engineers, which recently approved the barge blockade after local officials pushed it for weeks, is reviewing the plan to use rocks.

The corps recognizes there aren’t enough resources to fight the onslaught of crude and calls the barge plan a novel mix of local ingenuity and available equipment.

“Instead of having that oil slap up next to the banks, they want to funnel it into certain areas where they can actually capture it,” said Mike Farabee, a chief evaluator in the corps’ New Orleans regulatory office.

“The barge idea was a really good idea because we do have a lot of barges down here and not enough boom, so you use what you have,” Farabee added. “What you have here is people using some ingenuity.”

Millions of gallons of oil have spilled into the Gulf since the April 20 explosion on BP PLC’s Deepwater Horizon rig about 50 miles off the Louisiana coast. Since then, large swaths of sticky crude and wide patches of a thin sheen have been pushing into the state’s marshes and wetlands.

From boom to sand berms, and now barges, state and local officials are trying just about anything to keep the oil at bay.

“We want to fight this oil before it gets into our ecosystems, before it gets into our wetlands,” Gov. Bobby Jindal said. “I’d much rather fight the oil on the barges and the rocks.”