workplace hazards

I've talked a little bit about my grass plantings with NRCS and the local Soil and Water Conservation District. I love them. This is one of my favorite things I get to do. The ground is very soft so it's incredibly easy to plant grasses and rushes, basically just punching them into the mud with my bare hands. And it involves being in the water all day. I love being in the water.

Plus, it's really, really effective over a short period of time, which is very encouraging in the face of some very challenging, discouraging work dealing with Louisiana's coastal issues.

People ask, probably jokingly, if I ever see alligators when I'm out in the water planting. Yep. I do. They are pretty harmless though. One of my first grass plantings in the fall, a gator just kind of floated along the shore with us, never coming closer than about 40 feet. Everyone down here tells me they're actually pretty calm animals unless people go out of their way to agitate them, like on TV. Swamp People kind of has the same reputation here as Jersey Shore does at home (we don't like it).

Last week's planting also featured a little gator, just pacing back and forth across the canal at the end of the day while we waited for the boat to come back and pick us up.

But this week's planting was more hazardous than either of those. We planted bull rush in the Intracoastal Canal, launching from Larose, planting along the canal on the other side of the slim barrier to Lake Salvador. This map shows directions from Larose to Jean Lafitte, which is super indirect, but if you draw a straight line between those two towns, it gives you an idea of where we were--


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The big hazard du jour was not alligators or bull sharks (which is apparently also a possibility no one told me about until this week), it was barges and freight ships passing by, creating a very strong current. We were planting on a narrow, shallow shelf, right along the area that is dredged for these enormous ships. The planting will help protect the canal as well as the lake, helping reduce and prevent erosion that could lead to those bodies of water connecting and becoming quite difficult to maintain as a shipping route. I'm a pretty strong swimmer, but wandering too close to the edge of the shelf could have spelled the end.


Instead of being an alligator on the horizon, this week it was just big cargo ships and barges.

Thankfully, a non-issue. We stayed safe all day and didn't lose anyone. It was definitely interesting planting alongside big barges though. It reminded me how small I am, and how small what I'm doing is. However, I still believe that the small stuff matters. Bullrush grows in very densely, protecting the shoreline and withstanding strong currents and even a little bit of salt water. I'll probably be able to go back in July and check the progress. Every little bit of conservation is exciting to me!