re: Gating canals in houma area

What irks me about this whole deal is the people putting up the gates have enjoyed unrestricted access for generations. Only now they have decided to gate their canals off, and it's not because they have been inundated with law suits. They are doing it to protect their resource because the marsh around them is washing away. This is in part due to the canals themselves but I digress. Gated canals on private property that do not connect to state claimed water bottoms aren't the problem, it's the canals that alter or divert the flow of public water.

Why should water lose its public character because someone changed it's course?

I would like to see our marsh grass granted protected status similar to that of the mangroves in Florida. Just because it's on your property, does not mean you can cut it down or cause damage. What would really be nice is if all tidal marsh was treated like Everglades national park but that's a bit of a pipe dream.

Since we do have a somewhat unique system here the only real solution would be grant access to tall tidal water for navigation. I'm going to lump fishing in with navigation since it does not require you leaving the boat. Let the duck hunters keep their property as long as they continue with property taxes, so no hunting without permission outside of public areas. This is more for safety sake than anything else and sine we already have hunter harassment laws the people who are fishing that find themselves near a set of decoys have to leave anyway.

I would also like to see an increase in saltwater license fees. Separate saltwater from freshwater licenses. Force people fishing tidal marsh to buy an annual pass. Sort of a tax stamp if you will, to help fund the protection efforts. This way people who don't fish above the saltwater line pay more money into the system, without buying a freshwater license they will never use.

If the Louisiana marsh had a system like the everglades, with things like Chickees and better parks/boat ramps, use will almost certainly increase. Could you imagine a publicly funded system of chickees in the Biloxi marsh? It would be an outdoors mans dream. We would actually have a place that isn't freshwater for organizations like the boyscouts to use.