Southeastern Louisiana University has deployed four research buoys to monitor the Lake Maurepas ecosystem. The goal is to see where the lake stands before Air Products begin its project to inject carbon emissions into wells deep beneath the lake. Director of Lake Maurepas Monitoring Program Kyle Piller says the buoy captures real time data four times every hour…
“Each one of them gathers water quality perimeters every 15 minutes things like water temperatures, pH, conduct dissolved oxygen, and carbon dioxide levels.”
Two buoys are placed in Livingston Parish, one in Tangipahoa Parish, and one in St. John Parish. The Blind River buoy has a weather station to gather air temperature, wind speed, barometric pressure, and precipitation.
Piller says residents have expressed concerns about carbon capture in the lake. He says if one of the perimeters is out of the normal range…
“We can contact Air Products if its to the point where they’re injecting and let them know hey there’s something going on. Or if its significant or substantial we could even contact the state or federal regulatory agencies that really have control over this entire project.”
Researchers will monitor the health of fish, check the condition of the wetlands, and take water samples.
Piller says the information will be posted on easy to read dashboards on southeastern dot edu forward slash lakemaurepas.
“We’re hopeful that our efforts in the monitoring and our efforts with deploying the buoy kind of ease some of that concern cause we’re out there on behalf of the public monitoring this lake.”
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