Mile 133.9 - LBD CGB Marine Services Gulf, Repair Wharves and Upper East Bank Fleet Mooring

133.9 LBD CGB Marine Services Gulf, Repair Wharves and Upper East Bank Fleet Mooring

Bonnet Carre/Thirty-Five Mile Point Green Space

Paddlers coming around Bonnet Carre Point might receive a refreshing breath of humid salty air, especially in easterly winds. You are now less than five miles from the open waters of Lake Ponchartrain, which is a direct access to the Gulf of Mexico. You will be seeing more brown pelicans, anhingas, stilts, sandpipers, frigate birds, sheerwaters, and other birds common to the Gulf, also more osprey and less bald eagles. A narrow but precious Green Space is created here by the low lands immediately above below Bonnet Carre Point, including Bonnet Carre Island, and the broad floodplain created by the Bonnet Carre Spillway. The spillway is public land protected by the USACE, and open to all except during times of extreme flood when the gates are opened to relieve pressure from the big river above New Orleans. The Hymelia wetlands above Bonnet Carre Island was created by flood events of the past centuries, at Hymelia Crevasse, that have permanently scarred this landscape with deep blue holes (still intact) and a thriving lowlands now inhabited by gators, turtles, snakes, birds insect, and some mammals. This Green Space loses some of its quality by a triumvirate of powerful electrical generating stations that alone could power up a small city, and is contained on its southern extremity by the throbbing activity at Norco.