USACE Announces Review and Comment Period for Environmental Document

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, New Orleans District, has released a Supplemental Individual Environmental Report (SIER), titled “Bayou Sauvage, Turtle Bayou, and New Zydeco Ridge Restoration Projects, St. Tammany and Orleans Parish, Louisiana.”

This SIER presents changes to the recommended mitigation plan described in Programmatic Individual Environmental Report #36 (PIER #36), titled, Lake Pontchartrain and Vicinity (LPV) Hurricane and Storm Damage Risk Reduction System (HSDRSS) Mitigation, Orleans, Plaquemines, St. Bernard, St. Charles, St. John the Baptist and St. Tammany Parishes, Louisiana.

This SIER evaluates the potential impacts associated with implementation of proposed mitigation projects that would offset LPV, HSDRRS construction impacts to National Wildlife Refuge (NWR) lands and portions of the general impacts that occurred off of NWR lands.

These projects include measures to:

– Create and nourish approximately 325 acres of brackish marsh at the Bayou Sauvage NWR;

– Create approximately 160 acres of intermediate marsh at Turtle Bayou within the Bayou Sauvage NWR;

– Create 152 acres of bottomland hardwood wetlands and 118 acres of brackish marsh at the New Zydeco Ridge site within the Big Branch NWR.

The 30-day public review period for this IER began on July 8, 2014 and ends on August 8, 2014.

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Press Release, July 14, 2014