Louisiana kicked off an effort to identify a part of its coastline that potentially could be added to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) National Estuary Research Reserve program. The site would be for research projects aimed at understanding the chosen estuary. Its operations would be paid with a 70-30 split of federal/state funds. The area selected would be publicly owned lands and adjacent water. Gov. John Bel Edwards notified NOAA in 2019 that Louisiana was interested in participating in the program, which already includes 29 sites, including five in the other four Gulf Coast states, including reserves at Weeks Bay in Alabama and Grand Bay in Mississippi. The selection process generally takes up to six years. The process began Dec. 9 with two public meetings from Nicholls State University and on Zoom. Six broad areas of Louisiana’s coast are being searched: The estuarine zones of the Calcasieu River, Atchafalaya River Basin, Terrebonne Basin, Barataria River, Pontchartrain Basin, and the lower Mississippi River. (Source: NOLA.com 12/10/20) Louisiana could join other Gulf states in creating site for estuary research | Education | nola.com. For more information on the search for a reserve site in Louisiana, visit http://www.laseagrant.org/deltanerr/
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