Relocation to Restoration Part 3: Creating A Strategic Buffer for Industry and the City
This blog is reposted from Cherokee Concerned Citizens
As TAP member, Andrew Whitehurst with Healthy Gulf, pointed out during the walking tour, residential properties in Cherokee Forest already functions as a de facto buffer between heavy industry and the rest of Pascagoula. Their homes and yards absorbs noise, air pollutants, storm surge, and industrial runoff before nearly any other part of the city.
Note: All photos unless specified are provided courtesy of TAP members.
In 2020, MDEQ funded a $500,000 study to assess options for building a buffer between Bayou Casotte Industrial Parkway and Cherokee Forest subdivision. The study evaluated options ranging from vegetative buffers to different types of walls and combination thereof.
The study focused primarily on noise pollution and fugitive dust (also known as particulate matter (PM) – often full of heavy metals) largely coming from nearby shipbuilding operations and unpaved parking lots, but not from smoke stacks. The study revealed that the proposed options would have minimal impact on the “noise and dust” – hardly worth the construction costs.
The scope of their investigation, however, was limited to public property and did not consider the privately held land within the neighborhood.
As part of the R2R project, CCC partnered with Dr. Kathy Duderstadt, from the University of New Hampshire and also a TAP member, to conduct air modeling simulations to demonstrate how changes in land use in the Cherokee Forest neighborhood might reduce the transport and deposition of industrial pollution.
Modeling focused on fugitive emissions from the sandblasting and paint operations of Bollinger and included different buffer scenarios, including the 12 ft masonry wall proposed by MDEQ in 2020, a 50ft wall barrier, grasslands, a deciduous forest, and a pine forest.
The video below models the existing conditions of tiny paint and sandblasting particles (“dust” full of heavy metals and measured as PM10) leaving Bollinger property and moving through the Cherokee Forest neighborhood and beyond. While a majority of the PM10 is deposited in the neighborhood, a significant amount reaches into the neighborhood behind Cherokee, Delmas. Yellow particles deposit to the surface while red particles remain airborne.
With a forested buffer, the model reveals that replacing houses with a forest will likely result in as much as five times less pollution downwind of the Cherokee neighborhood.
The figure below charts the modeling results for various options, 12ft & 50 ft barriers, grass, and forest. The forest by far stands out as the most significant reduction in fugitive emissions.
Future modeling will take into account other fugitive emissions such as volatile organic compounds (VOC) like benzene, a known carcinogen, released by both the Chevron Refinery or BP Enterprise gas processing plant.
While more modeling needs to be done, preliminary results show that a nature-based buffer solution is more effective than the DEQ proposed barriers. It also shows that the residents of Cherokee Forest will not be the only benefactors of the Relocation to Restoration project if the group’s efforts are successful.
Benefits of Green Infrastructure
By restoring this land—not just removing homes, but actively investing in ecological health—we could create a blue-green buffer zone that benefits many neighborhoods throughout Jackson County. The benefits of green infrastructure are well documented and are increasingly being used with more traditional methods, such as underground piping, to ease the load on municipal systems and improve water quality issues often exacerbated by grey infrastructure.
Following the neighborhood walk and the toxic tour, the entire TAP group visited two projects currently underway in Moss Point that demonstrate how green infrastructure can be used to improve stormwater management and water quality by slowing down and spreading out runoff so that the water has more time to soak into the soil naturally.
The project currently underway at Kreole Elementary is a rain garden designed to slow, spread, and soak rainwater and stop the chronic flooding that is occurring at the school. Rain gardens are designed to hold rainwater for 24-48 hours after a major rainfall.
David Perkes, Executive Director of Gulf Coast Community Design Studio and TAP member, also took the TAP to see the site of a planned neighborhood stormwater park designed to alleviate flooding of nearby Moss Point neighborhoods. Much like this project, reverting vacated property into green spaces will have a significant impact on managing stormwater and thus, reducing flooding for nearby communities. Quantifying these and other benefits is part of the R2R planning project.
Rain garden at Kreole Elementary
Initial assessments of the site conditions reveal the project could provide many health, hazard mitigation, and ecosystem benefits – attracting a diverse group of stakeholders to participate. The subdivision’s location within the Pascagoula River watershed makes the area ideal for green infrastructure projects that could significantly reduce flooding and improve stormwater management and water quality.
The nearby tidal creek could be restored to a more natural state to both slow the flow and provide for more capacity to hold water. The creek drains into Chicot Bayou just south of the neighborhood into the marsh. The marsh is an accessible and beautiful wetland area. Re-naturalization and marsh improvements could result in water quality improvements downstream.
“The creek, despite its unstable banks and neglected appearance, has great potential. With the right investment, it could become a beautiful public space that serves both people and nature.”
Restoring the land to its natural habitat also offers many ecological benefits for existing wildlife. The neighborhood’s proximity to the Grand Bay National Estuary Reserve and Greenwood Island also make the area an ideal urban refuge for native wildlife and trans-Gulf migratory birds.
What’s next?
Identifying blue-green design scenarios that align with government and other key stakeholders’ goals will be a key part of this year’s planning. Over the course of the next few months, the R2R Steering Committee will be working with a Technical Delivery Partner and the TAP to complete a full site assessment and to put together a menu of options for multi-stakeholder input. A public workshop is expected to be scheduled for this summer. By the end of the year, we expect to have a win-win plan to relocate interested residents of Cherokee Forest and restore the land into a green-blue buffer that provides many benefits to surrounding communities and habitats.