By Maya Rodriguez / Eyewitness News www.wwltv.com 
Posted on May 9, 2010 at 5:46 PM NEW ORLEANS — As the oil spill moves further west of the Mississippi River, efforts are now underway near Grand Isle to protect the back bays and inland marshes. Part of that Herculean effort involves holding back the tide near Elmer’s Island. “The oil is moving in this direction,” said Capt. James Hoover of the Louisiana Army National Guard’s 922nd Horizontal Engineer Company. “In a nutshell, we’re putting a dam here to stop the oil from getting through.” Louisiana National Guard soldiers are using whatever fill material to try and seal a waterway along the eastern tip of Elmer’s Island. It is the length of two and half football fields and it links the Gulf of Mexico to the back bays and marshes near Grand Isle. It is the state’s only inhabited barrier island and could eventually end up in the path of the oil slick. Yet, as soon as crews drop the fill, Mother Nature begins taking it’s toll. “As the winds are picking up and the surf is picking up, the erosion is happening while we’re putting it in. So, it’s a real battle to get it done,” said Wayne Keller, executive director of the Grand Isle Port Commission. Aside from trying to seal up any breaches that cut through the island, there are also plans to lay out oil deflecting boom offshore. They have already laid down a secondary line of defense of oil containment boom on the shoreline. “We have an extreme current here, extreme waves and it’s coming in directly right now, so booms sometimes are not effective in this situation,” Keller said. …

National Guard races to fill waterway before oil slick reaches Grand Isle