A saltwater wedge climbing the Mississippi River threatens drinking water

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Officials are scrambling in an effort to hold back the encroaching sea and prevent the saltwater wedge from heading toward New Orleans.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/09/21/saltwater-wedge-mississippi-river-drought/?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_most



For six generations, Ricky Becnel’s family has run the massive tree nursery on the banks of the Mississippi River near Belle Chasse, La. Its 20 acres and half a million trees, most of them citrus, require pumping about 100,000 gallons a day of fresh water from the river during the warm season.


But in recent days, as salt water from the Gulf of Mexico has crept steadily up the drought-stricken river and within a mile of Saxon Becnel and Sons, he has scrambled to prepare for the very real possibility that the farm’s lifeblood might soon be unusable.

“It’s been consuming me. … I never thought I’d have to worry about this,” said Becnel, whose business supplies trees to large retailers around the country.

For the second year in a row, drought has severely weakened the flow of the Mississippi River, allowing a mass of saltwater from the Gulf of Mexico to force its way dozens of miles inland.

The steady creep of that saltwater wedge — which could threaten drinking water supplies in multiple Louisiana communities, undermine agriculture and prove corrosive to infrastructure — has left officials to scramble in an effort to slow down the encroaching sea.