Status:

• Restoration monitoring underway
• Restoration completed
• Restoration planning completed

Background:

The Trustees approached restoration planning with the view that the injured resources and associated lost services are part of an integrated ecological system and that the Calcasieu Estuary represents the relevant geographical area for appropriate restoration actions. This helps to ensure that the benefits of restoration actions are related, or have an appropriate nexus to the benthic resource injuries and losses. Restoration planning began with a search for potential projects within the watershed. The Trustees published notices announcing two public meetings held back-to-back in Lake Charles, LA on September 29, 2004. The purpose of these notices and meetings was to invite the public to submit restoration project proposals for the Bayou Verdine NRDA. Projects identified by the public and by the Trustees as a result of these and other efforts were evaluated to identify restoration project(s) that are feasible and will adequately compensate for the benthic losses. The criteria used to evaluate potential projects included: the ability of the project to meet restoration goals and objectives, cost of project, likelihood of project success, probability of project to result in injury to other resources, and extent that project benefits more than one resource.

The Trustees developed and proposed a restoration plan that is intended to compensate for the resource injuries and losses caused by the hazardous substances released into Bayou Verdine and Coon Island Loop.  That plan is described in the Draft Damage Assessment and Restoration Plan and Environmental Assessment (DARP/EA) for Bayou Verdine, Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana. It was released for a 60-day public review on March 27, 2009.  After comments on the plan were considered by the Trustees, a Final DARP/EA was released on March 26, 2010.

The following restoration projects were implemented by the PRP and completed in December 2011 in compliance with the requirements of the Consent Decree:

• Marsh Creation - Construction of 14.7 acres of marsh from degradation of levees and infilling channels
• Restoration of hydrologic connectivity to marsh interior - Creating trenasses (earthen cuts or ditches through the marsh) and levee degradation to ensure inundation/wetting of marsh surface

Monitoring of project performance has commenced and will be active through 2016.