GRAND ISLE, La. – As the giant oil spill continues to spread toward coastal communities west of the Mississippi River, Governor Bobby Jindal said Louisiana is moving closer to the worst case scenario and thus seeking some unusual solutions.
Monday, Jindal joined local leaders to take a tour of the efforts to hold back the oil in lower Jefferson Parish and Lafourche Parish.
The group of officials mounted up in military Humvees to check on the progress of the new levee on Elmer’s Island.
A Louisiana National Guard engineer company from Baton Rouge is racing to close a 700-foot gap in the island that was caused by Hurricane Gustav two years ago.
It’s one of four cuts in and around Grand Isle, which are known as passes and lead from the Gulf to the inland marshes.
The levee could be finished as early as Tuesday.
“We’re going to continue to push for more hard boom,” said Jindal. “But there’s not enough boom. What we’re doing is we’re using sand to build natural barriers to fill the pass.”
Jindal said he the state is asking the Army Corps of Engineers for permission to dredge sand offshore and use it to repair or add on to some of the barrier islands off the Louisiana coast.
With the oil spill now spreading west of the Mississippi, it’s a race against time to keep the oil from reaching sensitive inland waterways and marshland.
“If you look at the Wednesday projections, you’re showing the oil getting to the eastern tip, if the projections are right, the very eastern tip of the Atchafalaya Basin,” he said. “We know how important Timbalier Bay and the Barataria Bay and so many of these wetlands are to Louisiana and this country.”
“Every day when you see it coming more west, more west, there is only so much we can do to protect the island,” added Jefferson Parish Councilman Tom Capella. “We’re doing everything that we can.”
U.S. Senator David Vitter said Louisiana is taking some extraordinary protective measures because it isn’t getting its fair share of boom.
“Our ratio was on a different planet, much lower than the ratios of Mississippi and Alabama,” he said.
Vitter said he is pushing the Coast Guard to change the formula so Louisiana can get more boom – and in a hurry.
One report Monday had oil only four miles from the coast of Grand Isle.
