Weather Pattern Affecting Wetlands

The losses of large portions of the chain of the barrier islands from Hurricane Katrina greatly affected the rate of land loss. Issues continued when the sea levels are increasing due to natural and unnatural causes. The increases in greenhouse gases and pollutants have affected weather patterns around the world. New weather patterns have altered the intensity of storms and hurricanes all around the world.

Erosion and wetland loss had been occurring at a natural rate of change forever. The earth has been able to adjust itself under perfectly natural conditions. However, humankind has disrupted that natural cycle by air pollution, construction, and man-made ways of engineering water. A document published by Robert R. Twilley from Louisiana State University explains how the Gulf Coast is even more vulnerable than other regions of the United States. Twilley says that, “the Gulf Coast region is considered especially vulnerable to a changing climate because of its relatively flat topography, rapid rates of land subsidence”. He goes on to say mention that in the Mississippi delta, rapid subsidence has already produced accelerated rates of relative sea-level rise.”

If the intensities of storms remain consistent through the next century, the already affected wetlands will still lose up to 40 inches due to a decrease in ability to withstand storms and natural subsidence.  If these wetlands can balance themselves, the current climate models would predict that the Gulf Coast wetlands would only lose around one to three feet instead.

Sources:

http://www.pewclimate.org/docUploads/Regional-Impacts-Gulf.pdf

Laws Protecting Wetlands

The Environmental Protection Agency in recent years has helped develop legislation that would further help the wetlands and the other parts of the United States. Two key pieces of legislation specifically that affect the restoration and preservation of the wetlands are the Clean Water Act of 1972 and North American Wetlands Conservation of 1989. The first act, also known as the Federal Water Pollution Control Act, was originally put into law in 1948 but overhauled in the 1970s. The programs and laws in the act help with both the quality of water and helps punish people and companies who impede the progress of such things.

The Clean Water Act has five key points. The Encyclopedia of Earth website at eoearth.org defines the five points of this act as: a system of minimum national effluent standards for each industry; water quality standards; a discharge permit program that translates these standards into enforceable limits; provisions for special problems such as toxic chemicals and oil spills; and, a revolving construction loan program for publicly-owned treatment works.

Water protection is addressed specifically in two sections: Section 101 and Section 303. The first section, Section 101 helps protect the wildlife as well as any recreation activities in or on water in the United States. The latter section, Section 303, helps protect the water quality; however some states hadn’t established quality standards for wetlands. The other problem is that the Clean Water Act did not protect the wetlands or the elimination of them. Another section discusses specifically the pollution of the wetlands and other waters.

The other important act to protect wetlands is the North American Wetlands Conservation Act. The act helps provide grants for wetland conservation and protect the wildlife of the area. Funding for the act comes from partnerships with businesses, conservation organizations, citizens, and the government. The federal government, specifically the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, then matches these funds. 

Sources:

http://www.eoearth.org/article/Clean_Water_Act,_United_States

http://www.water.ncsu.edu/watershedss/info/wetlands/protect.html#sec101

http://www.fws.gov/birdhabitat/Grants/NAWCA/index.shtm

http://operationdeltaduck.com/blog/2011/02/the-death-of-north-american-wetlands-conservation-act-grants/

http://www.igkmrp.org/nawca.htm

Pollution & Toxins

     The wetlands in Louisiana can also act as a buffer to pollutants in the water. While beautiful, the common comparison frequently made about the wetlands is that they are the kidneys of nature. The basis behind the nickname is that kidneys can filter out pollution and toxins that advance into the area. However, like the kidney which does a similar function in the human body, if it takes in too much pollution and toxic materials, the wetlands will begin to breakdown and begin to be destroyed. The BP Oil Spill in 2010 and Hurricane Katrina expedited the destruction with a mix of different toxins. However, in some cases, the toxins found may have been already present long before these two famous disasters.

     Hurricane Katrina in 2005 caused a variety of issues with health and pollution in the Louisiana area. Some people in the area discussed a phenomenon they called “Toxic Soup” that while an issue was not nearly all because of the hurricane. The initial reports had the public concerned that the toxicity of the floodwaters due to chemicals, oil, human waste, and even dead bodies. However, this would be disproved as a later study showed that the amount of toxic metals found had been present in waters prior to Hurricane Katrina. The following was posted in an article posted on medicalnewstoday.com:

In one report, Michael T. Abel, Ph.D., of Texas Tech University in Lubbock, described finding potentially hazardous levels of lead and arsenic in New Orleans soil samples collected after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. "It should be noted that similar values found in this sampling effort were present in studies conducted before the hurricanes," Abel wrote in a summary of his presentation.

Without the wetlands, a lot of this natural filtering would not have been feasible. In this same article it is also mentioned how 118 square miles of wetlands turned into just water, which will reduce the amount of protection these wetlands can provide. 

      Five years later, the BP Oil Spill destroyed more of these same wetlands. Unfortuantely though in the case of an oil spill, the recovery efforts cannot be as simple as the ones for any other disaster. Charles Lavis, a lawyer working on the case of the oil spill explains on a blog that the mix of oily water and dead vegetation is hard to clean up because walking on soaked grass and removing said vegetation can remove roots necessary for re-growth. Some scientist have said though that nature will run its course to remove the mess. The problem with letting nature do what it needs to is the fishing business that is the primary source of income for many people in Louisiana. The other larger concern is that the amount of land that would be lost by the Oil Spill will exceed the amount lost by Hurricane Katrina.

Sources:

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/51661.php

http://www.democracynow.org/2005/9/8/toxic_soup_the_deadly_floodwaters_of

http://www.bpoilspilllawblog.com/2010/08/no-easy-answers-in-wetland-cle.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/23/gulf-oil-spill-cleaning-w_n_586240.html