BILOXI, Miss.—The Mississippi Sound, 90 miles of shallow water that runs along the Mississippi Gulf Coast, “will be a dead sea within a generation” without corrective action, Mississippi Sound Coalition Manager Gerald Blessey warned a group of U.S. congressmen and officials on Tuesday.
In 2019, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers opened the Bonnet Carré Spillway twice for a total of 123 days. The spillway dumped over 1.35 trillion cubic feet of freshwater into the Mississippi Sound—water polluted with fertilizer, animal manure and runoff from 31 states along the Mississippi River.
Blessey, who served as mayor of Biloxi in the 1980s, told a gathered roundtable that the openings caused dangerous neurotoxin-producing algae blooms and permanent dead zones in the Sound.
“This is a national food security problem, a national transportation security problem,” Blessey said. “And it cries out for a national solution.”
In response, members of the Mississippi Sound Coalition urged Congress to take steps to help protect the Sound and offered what they call “win-win solutions” to both address flood control and protect the Sound from harmful pollution during the congressional roundtable.
The Mississippi Sound Coalition’s mission is to restore and protect the Mississippi Sound estuary through scientific research, education and advocacy. The coalition was organized after the 2019 openings of the Bonnet Carré Spillway caused devastating environmental and economic loss across the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
“It’s such an integral part of our community, our culture, our quality of life and, of course, our economic viability,” Mississippi Sound Coalition Chair Marlin Ladner said. “So it’s critical that we try and preserve the Sound in good condition so that we can continue the tradition of the Gulf Coast.”
The U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure’s Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment held the roundtable at the Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College Hospitality Resort Management Center. It brought together U.S. House Rep. Trent Kelly of Mississippi’s 1st Congressional District; Rep. Mike Ezell of Mississippi’s 4th Congressional District; the Mississippi Sound Coalition; the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and other stakeholders on the Gulf Coast.
Blessey recommended adoption of the Mississippi Sound Coalition’s proposed Northern Gulf Estuary Protection Act, which was later reaffirmed by others in the coalition. The Northern Gulf Estuary is the large estuary composed of smaller estuaries where freshwater from rivers empties into the Mississippi Sound and mixes with saltwater from the Gulf of Mexico.
He said the proposed act will require the Corps to add to its mission “an affirmative duty to protect the ecosystem of the Northern Gulf Estuary in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama” in addition to the current duty to protect life and property.
Blessey said this amendment to the law would authorize the Corps to take “bolder action” to protect the environment than they have been able to in the past. The act also includes replacing the Bonnet Carré Spillway and Morganza Spillway with modern structures.
Dr. Moby Solangi, the chair of the science advisory committee for the Mississippi Sound Coalition, warned the aging structures may cause environmental devastation if they give out.
“One of these days they’re going to give way and there’s going to be nothing left,” Solangi said.
The Northern Gulf Estuary Protection Act also recommends directing federal agencies to consider options to distribute floodwaters such as opening the Morganza Spillway alongside the Bonnet Carré Spillway in order to divert water from the Mississippi River upstream, which would reduce the total water reaching the Bonnet Carré Spillway downstream.
Acknowledging the large cost it would take to update the spillways’ aging infrastructure, Blessey proposed a trust fund as a possible solution with everyone up and down the Mississippi River paying into the trust based on what they dump into the river.
Following the roundtable, Rep. Mike Ezell said this solution “sounds like a very good start” toward addressing the problem.
Solangi, who also serves as the executive director of the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies, said marine life has faced significant increases of mortality during times when the Bonnet Carré Spillway has been opened.
The Mississippi Sound is home to the most endangered sea turtle in the world and the largest population of dolphins in the United States. He said dolphins are a “good biological indicator of the environment,” comparing them to the canaries miners once used to warn of danger.
“What the canary is telling you is: we are next,” Solangi said. “This is an existential threat.”
Ryan Bradley, the executive director of Mississippi Commercial Fisheries United, said opening the spillway has also negatively impacted fishermen and the seafood industry on the Gulf Coast.
Bradley said fishermen have been forced to fish farther out, been driven out of business and faced an oyster mortality rate of 95%.
“Shrimpers play such an important role in our economic production here on the coast,” Bradley said. “Twenty years ago we had over 2,000 commercial shrimpers; today we’ve got less than 200.”
Bradley also expressed concerns about prolonged openings of the spillway.
“Anything open for longer than 30 days is a death sentence for us and the seafood industry,” Bradley said.
Northern Gulf Institute Director Dr. Paul Mickle has been leading research on the spillway for nine years. He said the Northern Gulf Institute administered an investigation by the University of Southern Mississippi to identify ecological tipping points in reference to the Bonnet Carré Spillway.
“Based on multiple model investigations, openings less than three consecutive weeks or less than 80% of the volume of Lake Pontchartrain will limit ecological losses,” Mickle said.
Executive Director of the Mississippi Hotel and Lodging Association Linda Hornsby shared that opening the spillway has not only negatively impacted the environment and seafood industry, but also tourism on the Gulf Coast.
Hornsby said “ecology and economy go hand in hand.” In the months following the 2019 Bonnet Carré Spillway opening, she said the Gulf Coast saw a year-over-year deficit of 47% in occupancy and 26% in revenue with “well over $20 million in lost hotel revenue alone.”
“In my 40 years in this capacity, we have not experienced any one singular incident which so negatively impacted tourism on the Mississippi Gulf Coast—the three-county area—in such a concentrated time period as much as the unprecedented opening of the Bonnet Carré Spillway in 2019, ” Hornsby said. “We cannot stress enough that the Mississippi Gulf Coast cannot afford this to ever happen again.”
Hornsby said it’s much more costly to earn back a customer’s loyalty and repair perceptions of the coast than to get them as a customer in the first place.
“You’ve got to erase that image of a dead dolphin with lesions all over washed up on the beach,” Hornsby said. “That’s what we were fixing.”
Following the roundtable, Gerald Blessey said he hopes the congressional subcommittee will recommend that the full committee introduce the Northern Gulf Estuary Protection Act.
“The enthusiasm of these two congressmen for our ideas was very gratifying,” Blessey said.
Ezell said he hopes to take the information the Mississippi Sound Coalition shared during the listening session back to Washington “so that we can follow up and act on their request.”
“If you can get 80% of the people on board, you pass,” Ezell said. “So I will do everything I can.”
He said he believes the proposed solution to open the Morganza Spillway at the same time as the Bonnet Carré Spillway in order to decrease water volume downstream “would be phenomenal.”
Ezell also voiced agreement with concerns that were expressed regarding the aging infrastructure of the Bonnet Carré spillway.
“I believe we need to embark on a new vision of infrastructure completely for the country,” Ezell said. “And we would start here.”
Blessey said he was “disappointed” no state leaders attended the roundtable, because he feels this issue is also “important to the state.”
In order for change to be made in Congress, Blessey said he hopes to see state legislators and leaders in Mississippi give more attention to solving this problem.
“Not only do we put a lot of tax money in from the seafood and tourism industries, but our whole way of life is at risk,” Blessey said. “They’re supposed to represent us—so I hope they got the message.”
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