Wetlands Watchers Park nearing completion
Published 12:00 am Tuesday, August 3, 2010
By ROBIN SHANNON
L’Observateur
NORCO – After a series of delays, a wetland park on the shores of Lake Pontchartrain in St. Charles Parish that is nearly six years in the making is nearing completion.
The 28-acre Wetland Watchers Park, a haven for education, recreation and restoration in St. Charles, is set to open in the fall, according to a release from the parish. The park is located directly to the east of the Bonnet Carre Spillway’s lower guide levee on the north side of Airline Highway.
St. Charles Parish spokesperson Renee Simpson said the park includes a nature trail, an outdoor classroom, a small parking area and some picnic shelters. She said the contractors are adding better access roads as well as a 2,000-sqare foot pavilion.
“A really nice parking lot is evolving into a park like no other in the parish,” said St. Charles Coastal Zone Administrator Earl Matherne said. “The are will teach countless kids from across the region about wetland preservation.”
Simpson said Echo Ventures of Norco, the contractors working the project, is nearing completion on a $515,000 contract that was awarded in October.
She said work was stalled on the project until February by federal permit delays as well as negotiations on an access agreement with the Army Corps of Engineers. She said the work is expected to be done in the next couple of months.
The park is the centerpiece of the LaBranche Wetland Watchers program, a service-learning project created in 1998 by Barry Guillot, a teacher at Harry Hurst Middle School in Destrehan.
Guillot said the program allows students to engage in science and learn about challenges facing wetlands in southeast Louisiana. Each year, over 1,500 fifth- through eighth-grade students attend trips to the site to complete water monitoring, macro-invertebrate collection and identification, litter cleanups, soil and plant identification, tree planting and more.
Guillot said the program and the vision of a conservation-minded park would not have been possible without the support of Norco resident Milton Cambre, an avid wetlands advocate of over 40 years.
“The area of the park where the picnic tables are located was all water eight years ago,” Guillot said. “None of that land would be there without (Cambre’s) work.”
Guillot said Cambre teamed up with his Wetland Watchers group for student field trips, and that shaped the plan of the park as it is today. Phase one of the park includes a grand pavilion and 900-foot-long nature trail, outdoor classroom, picnic pavilions, an armored shoreline and blacktop roadways.
Guillot said the outdoor classroom, funded by Dow Chemical, stands in the center of a palmetto forest, within which some plants are more than 400 years old. No palmettos were destroyed in the process of building the classroom. Here students and patrons will be able to interface with and learn about nature at the same time.
In 2004, the Pontchartrain Levee Board donated land for field studies with the goal of restoring it and keeping it from eroding into the lake. In April 2006, St. Charles Parish government dedicated the area to become Wetland Watchers Park.
Guillot said phase two will include five “learning pads,” allowing for hands-on education. He said the pads will consist of a deck with signage for a specific activity. For example, one pad will feature bird watching with mounted binoculars.
Simpson said two grants were awarded for the construction of the park and its amenities. The state Legislature provided the park $190,000 for construction.
Another grant came from the National Resource Conservation Service in the amount of $3,000. Additionally, Dow donated $100,000, and Motiva Refinery donated $140,000.