Pontchartrain Conservancy is working with local partners to trap, remove, and prevent litter from accumulating in the City of New Orleans.
Type of Project: Interception
Region: Gulf of America
Project Dates: November 2025 – October 2028
Who is involved?
With support from the NOAA Marine Debris Program, Pontchartrain Conservancy is partnering with Osprey Initiative to install and maintain litter interception devices in New Orleans. With help from several local community organizations and municipalities, the project is establishing an outreach and engagement plan to promote debris prevention, monitoring, and maintenance near the installed devices. The targeted audience for this plan includes year-round residents and seasonal tourists, especially those participating in Mardi Gras festivities.
What is the project and why is it important?
The city of New Orleans, Louisiana, is nearly surrounded by water, including the mighty Mississippi River, Lake Pontchartrain, Lake Borgne, and the Rigolets Pass. The city has become a prime example of environmental vulnerability due to sitting below sea level, a complicated levee system, and extreme weather events such as Hurricanes Katrina and Ida. Through it all, New Orleans has remained an internationally recognized home for unique music, deeply rooted culture, and unrivaled fun.
This project is a direct response to the need for strategies to address widespread aquatic litter that impacts the waterways. The project activities are supporting the cultural, economic, environmental, and historical identity of the city, as well as the related flooding that impacts its neighborhoods. As a low-lying area surrounded by levees, New Orleans is at constant risk of flooding during heavy rain events. The storm drainage system manages excess water in this vulnerable location by using pump stations and over 72,000 catch basins. This infrastructure works to move stormwater away from the city streets and residential areas and into adjacent waterways, including Lake Pontchartrain. However, litter clogs these systems and can create serious problems, reducing their ability to work and leading to increased localized flooding. Much of this flooding impacts neighborhoods in the city, including those identified for the project: the Treme, the Lower 9th Ward, and New Orleans East.
Two distinct types of litter interception devices are being installed in drainage canals around the city to catch debris. Litter Booms, and their larger counterpart, the Litter Gitter, will passively accumulate floating trash within the canals and the devices will be monitored year-round to remove litter that makes its way into the waterway. In addition to these aquatic devices, a third type of interception device will be installed seasonally during Mardi Gras to catch small items like plastic beads and parade throws. These Litter Interceptors are integrated into roadside storm drains and can be easily removed after the bustling festival season.
Local outreach partners are recruiting community members to attend program engagement meetings and field trips to device sites in order to raise awareness about the project. With the help of residents, a prevention plan will eventually be created based on the data collected by the devices in order to help understand how litter impacts critical resources and the surrounding environment. This work will enable Pontchartrain Conservancy to remove and prevent litter in the metropolitan area and its surrounding neighborhoods for years to come.
This article originally appeared on the NOAA Marine Debris Program site. You can view the original story online here.