A saltwater wedge climbing the Mississippi River threatens drinking water

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

[link: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.