The Bonnet Carre Spillway is considered to be the best swamp and wetland area south of Lake Pontchartrain. It’s green, lush and full of life.

But if you look at the wetlands outside of the spillway levees, there’s a different story. There, the cypress swamp trees are dying, and when they’re gone, the ground will sink further, the water will rise and any wetlands to protect the area from a hurricane will be gone.

“It’s in bad shape. The only way to restore it is to get some freshwater and nutrients back in there,” said Carlton Dufechou, Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation.

Dufechou says there is a solution to bring nutrient rich freshwater into the Labranche wetlands to the east of the spillway and the Frenier-Manchac wetlands to the west. And it could be relatively easy.

“This is the low hanging fruit. These are the things we can do almost tomorrow and at a very little cost,” Dufechou said.

When the spillway opens right now, the river water rushes directly to the lake. It’s guided by two levees that line the spillway.

But Dufechou says there’s a proposal to cut holes into the levee on both sides, allowing that fresh water to be diverted into the marshes. Instead of valuable silt flowing into the lake, it would help regenerate life in the wetlands.

“These are the wetlands, the old cypress swamps that desperately needs nutrients, needs the fresh water from the spillway. This area could thrive on it,” Dufechou said.

“It’s a common sense solution that we need to move forward on as quickly as possible,” said Garret Graves, the state’s director of coastal restoration.

Graves said the state is on board with the plan, but isn’t sold on whether it’s something the corps can do quickly.

“There continues to be this arduous corps of engineers project development implementation process where they take as long as 10 years to decide if something is valuable or valid or not, and of course millions of dollars,” Graves said.

Chris Brantley, corps project manager at the spillway, says the concept of diverting water into the nearby marshes is a good one. But he says the plan needs to be studied to make sure diverting the water won’t impact the spillway’s ability to prevent flooding downstream.

“We’ve got private land owners we need to worry about,” Brantley said. “We have various types of stakeholders out here in the spillway, and in those areas we need to listen to and see what they say about these projects.”

Dufechou said the concept would include a way to replenish the wetlands with river nutrients all the time, and not just every dozen or so years when the spillway gates are opened up.

If they built a small ridge levee between two guide levees, something that wouldn’t interfere with recreation, then it would allow water to pond up pretty much every spring when the river rises, Dufechou said. Then it could be diverted into the wetlands every year.

Another benefit to this plan, Dufechou said, is by putting the river water into the marshes, it keeps the water high in nitrogen and phosphorous out of the lake, where it can do damage.

“The wetlands thrive on those nutrients where they’ll potentially cause algae blooms and dead zones in the lake,” Dufechou said. “Wherever possible, we’ve got to mimic mother nature and we’ve got the great opportunity right here.”