Four miles off Lakeshore Drive in New Orleans, a barge is dumping 180 concrete structures into nearly 20 feet of water in Lake Pontchartrain.This $160,000 project is creating one of four artificial reefs. It is part of the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation strategy to revive the lake's ecology.
"20 years ago this lake was a polluted mess," said Carlton Dufrechou, executive director of the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation. "It was brown all the time. Shell dredging was still going on. You had sewage discharges from the south shore, agriculture runoff from the Northshore. You couldn't fish in it, you couldn't swim in it. Today you can jump in it, and they got fish in it."
The concrete forms, called reef balls, are 2, 3, and 4 feet tall, and are filled with holes, creating an attractive habitat for fish on the flat lake bottom...[WWLTV.com]
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