As a new Mississippi River bridge moves forward, rare cypress forest could be in danger

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Laura Comeaux’s rubber boots squelched in the mire as she trekked through her family land, 128 acres of intermittently flooding forest situated on a sharp bend in the Mississippi River.

Morning light cut a path through the tree canopy of towering bald cypresses, Nuttall's oaks and red maples and dappled the forest floor. Twittering birds eyed the movement below from high up in the branches.

A little more than three years ago, before the announcement that this land was in the path of a potential site for a new, $2 billion Mississippi River bridge south of Baton Rouge, a day like this would have felt different to Comeaux. It would have been free from the visions of destruction that, these days, accompany every trip into the Plaquemine Point woods.

“It’s like an endless worry,” Comeaux said. “It’s been three years this month that we were invited to the town hall meeting.”

It was that public meeting in 2022 that would turn Comeaux into an environmentalist and protester of what the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development calls "Option E-11-IV" — one of three potential corridors for a new Mississippi River bridge connecting La. 1 and La. 30.

Residents on both sides of the river are desperate for an additional bridge in the Baton Rouge area, where over 100,000 drivers cross the I-10 Horace Wilkinson Bridge each day, and traffic can back up for hours after an accident.

Yet that demand is in tension with the reality that one bridge placement would likely bisect and partially destroy Plaquemine Point, a river swamp in Iberville Parish that experts have named as one of the last old-growth, naturally regenerating cypress forests in Louisiana.

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DOTD has maintained that all three placement options carry environmental and economic consequences.

Alternatives would disrupt existing infrastructure and pipelines owned by Shintech, a leading global producer of polyvinyl chloride — and a major employer in Iberville and West Baton Rouge Parish, employing about 700 direct employees and 800 nested contractors at its Plaquemine and Addis sites.

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“At the end of the day, there are going to be impacts — adverse impacts — to somebody from the delivery of this project,” DOTD Secretary Joe Donahue said. “I think that the Comeauxs have done a great job of making their concerns known, of promoting the benefits of Plaquemine Point. Where that ends up shaking out in the impacts to the other alternatives is yet to be determined.”

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