2677 Caffin Avenue, New Orleans 70117 (Park at this address, and cross Florida Avenue to get to platform).
Before the 1960s, the area known as the Bayou Bienvenue Wetland Triangle provided generations of Lower Ninth Ward residents with diverse wildlife and vegetation for hunting, trapping, fishing, gathering timber, and enjoying natural beauty.
Once a thriving freshwater cypress-tupelo swamp, the Triangle also helped protect the neighborhood from storms by acting as a buffer against storm surge, wind-driven waves, and flooding caused by tropical storms. According to lifelong Lower Ninth Ward resident and conservationist John Taylor as quoted in the Times Picayune newspaper in 2013, “It was 100 percent pure tupelo swamp, with the trees so close by each other that you could pull your canoe through tree by tree. The trees were less than three feet apart and Spanish moss was hanging down, from the top all the way twinkling down to the water.”
Completed in 1968, The Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (MRGO, commonly pronounced “Mister Go”), was constructed Army Corps of Engineers to provide a shortcut for shipping between the Port of New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico. The MRGO channel brought saltwater inland from the Gulf, killing the freshwater wetland trees and plants that cannot live in saltwater and destroying thousands of acres of marshes and cypress swamps. The economic benefits promised from MRGO never materialized, since larger shipping vessels preferred to use the Mississippi River. Bayou Bienvenue became an open-water brackish “ghost swamp,” with little vegetation and only the skeletons of cypress trees remaining.
During Hurricane Katrina, MRGO acted as a funnel for storm surge into the Lower Ninth Ward and St. Bernard Parish, significantly contributing to flooding and damage and resulting in breached levees and floodwalls. In fact, residents of the area filed a lawsuit against the Army Corps due to the role MRGO played in magnifying the effects of the storm. Under pressure from numerous community organizations, scholars, and NGO’s, MRGO was closed in 2009 following a mandate from Congress, with a surge barrier completed in 2013. Bayou Bienvenue is now a part of federal and state coastal restoration plans, due in large part to the work and advocacy of residents and environmental organizations.
The Bayou Bienvenue Wetland Platform was built in 2008 as an effort of community members in partnership with environmental and social justice organizations and universities. Outfitted with informational exhibits, the platform serves as a setting for education about the environmental history of the ecosystem, wetland loss, coastal restoration, and the environmental justice relationship between the people and place. (Courtesy of Amy E. Lesen)
Nearby Sites of Interest
The Lower Ninth Ward Living Museum
1235 Deslonde St., New Orleans 70117
(504) 220-3652
l9livingmuseum.org/
Oral histories and exhibits about the Lower Ninth Ward, a collaboration between scholars and community members.
House of Dance & Feathers
1317 Tupelo St., New Orleans 70117, (504) 957-2678
http://houseofdanceandfeathers.org/
“A celebration of New Orleans street culture,” a unique museum run by lifelong Lower Ninth Ward resident Ronald Lewis. Visits by appointment only.
Lower Ninth Ward Hurricane Katrina Memorial
Corner of N. Claiborne Ave. and Tennessee St., New Orleans 70117
A sculpture and monument commemorating the effect of the post-Katrina flooding on the Lower Ninth Ward neighborhood and honoring residents.
To Learn More
- Check out the website of the community groups that founded and maintain the platform http://restorethebayou.org/
- Lower Ninth Ward Center for Sustainable Engagement and Development, community organization involved with the platform project: http://sustainthenine.org/
- Craig Colten, Perilous Place, Powerful Storms: Hurricane Protection in Coastal Louisiana (University Press of Mississippi, 2009).