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Dave Martin / AP
A leafless tree stands over graves in the Cheniere Caminada cemetery in Grand Isle, La. Many coastal Louisiana cemeteries are just skeletons of what they used to be.
The Associated Press reports from Leeville, La. — As a young adult, Kathleen Cheramie visited her grandmother's grave in a tree-lined cemetery where white concrete crosses dotted a plot of lush green grass just off Louisiana Highway 1.
Now, the cemetery in Leeville is a skeleton of its former self. The few trees still standing have been killed by saltwater intruding from the Gulf. Their leafless branches are suspended above marsh grass left brown and soggy from saltwater creeping up from beneath the graves.
"It was a beautiful place to visit," said Cheramie, 67, who lives in nearby Golden Meadow. "It hurts to see it now."
Dave Martin / AP
What's left of the old Leeville cemetery is only accessible by boat. Some headstones are barely visible above the water, and waves lap at the bricks and concrete surrounding caskets buried at the site since the late 1800s. Much of the ground has subsided to barely sea level, and during Hurricane Isaac, about seven feet of land washed away in the tidal surge.
Cheramie's small family graveyard is among at least two dozen cemeteries across the southeast Louisiana coast that are rapidly sinking or washing away because of erosion and subsidence accelerated by the tropical punch of storms such as Katrina, Rita, Gustav, Ike, Lee and Isaac.
Slideshow: Isaac makes landfall on the US Gulf Coast
Coastal Louisiana has lost about 1,900 square miles of land since the 1930s as canals dug for oil exploration allowed salty water to intrude into marshes and a succession of powerful hurricanes sucked marsh muck that protects populated areas out into the Gulf.
Dave Martin / AP
Windell Curole handles pieces of headstone at his small family cemetery which sits along the bayou near Leeville. Curole said saltwater from the Gulf is causing a crippling subsidence problem.
South Lafourche Levee District General Manager Windell Curole, who also serves on the state's Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, said saltwater from the Gulf is causing a crippling subsidence problem.
"We did not bury people in marshes," Curole said. "We buried them on high ground. This was high ground, and now it's subsided to the point of being wetlands and open water." Read the full story.
Editor's note: Images taken on Dec. 29, 2012 and made available to NBC News today.
Dave Martin / AP
Water washes around and against the tombs of those buried in a Leeville, La., cemetery.
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It is to bad, but they [county and state gov] new of this area, to low, and graves could and will was away.
They did nothing, and now, it will cost us agian more. sorry to the old timers, who have lived there for many years.
What idiots built a cemetery anywhere near the water?
It will not matter in 50 years or less there well be no one buried they will be cremated
Which I am all for. Cemeteries are a waste of space and there is no reason to bury people other than outdated tradition...
A shame to be sure but what do you expect when you build a city below sea level??
Mother nature gives some more land and then takes it away from someone else. The only thing we can hope to do is slow the process down. Mother nature will win in the end though. She always does. Feel sorry for the folks still living though to have to move their loved ones.
Don't some countries put their dead on rooftops and let the vultures pick the corpses clean? That's what I'd like to do with my body. Cemeteries are such a waste.
What they fail to mention in the article is that the main reason for the subsidence and salt water intrusion is the levee sysem on the Mississippi River. Since the Corps of Engineers failed to make it possible to periodically divert a portion of the River water and its sediment into the the marshes and swamps- which is what happened naturally prior to the levees- there is no rebuilding of the land. Those diversions were part of the original engineering design of the River levee but were eliminated by the Corps. The canals dug for oil exploration only acceleated the problem.
This is something that can and should be fixed with a network of diversions. It just requires the political will and a long view to correct a mistake made decades ago.
But you need more than just diversions during floods - you need a willingness of all property owners to allow flooding/silting, which means that things they build on the land get buried (like graves.) The canals must be blocked and allowed to silt up, so there is no easy path for storm surges to squirt inland. The natural vegetation that blocks surges must be restored. Not a trivial project - nature could do it in a few hundred years, if all the people were removed from the area.
"But you need more than just diversions during floods"- With the proper design there would be annual diversions at several points during the spring when River levels are highest, and these would flow through wetlands and help stabilize, if not rebuild, the marshes. The Caernarvon Diversion is an experiment to do that that seems to be working. http://www.gulfbase.org/project/view.php?pid=cfdp
The spillways that are in place now ae only opened every few years when floods threaten.
The diversion systems aren't perfect yet- they need to be modified to divert more sediment and to somheow address the problem of excess phosphates etc. from upstream agricultural runoff upstream, but they have been shown to work well in numerous applications.
It shall only get worse as long as that state is ruled by a foreigner.
Nonsense! Everyone in Louisiana, that is not Native American, is a foreigner!!!
Gov. Jindal has done more for this state than any other pos politician has done for their own. It's people like you that make this country a horrible place to raise a family. Stop being such an ignorant racist and stfu
amazing, people choose to live on land taken from the sea and then wonder why stuff washes away.
Not all the land in Louisiana is reclaimed from the sea./The land has been there for hundreds of years but is situated one foot below sea level.So when there is a large rainstorm(very regularly),water pools on the land until it can find a place to runoff of evaporate when the sun comes out.I lived on a similar lot with a house.The only difficulty was when you tried to bury something,like a dead animal.AS soonas you dug down 3",the hole would begin filling with water.There was no way to avoid burying anything without understanding they would be submerged in water in no time.This was true of relatives,unless, you could afford an above ground buriel!
....and castles made of sand fall into the sea, eventually. - Jimi Hendrix
Sad, but inevitable. Frankly I don't understand the need for cemetaries anymore. The religious justifcation for full body burial (and many embalmed with toxic chemicals no less) is ridiculous. If there is a God, and he created man from dust, then he's certainly capable of resurrecting man from ash. Also ridiculous is some state / local government laws that ashes must be buried! Wasting more land and adding to the financial burden of grieving families. Time for change people.
I never knew there were so many experts out there. (Or idiots)
When I was a boy of 8 in the 1950's,a hurricane hit Louisiana named Audre.It killed over 600 people and devastated several parishes that bordered with the Gulf of Mexico.I went out with by brother in law to collect bodies for three days.We would see a body,pull up close to it,hook the body with a huge metal meatpacking hook and tie it to the boat.My job was to keep snakes,huge rats and other wild animals from trying to enter the small skiff and to first displace any animals or snakes that may have already claimed the body.This is one of the most horrendous things I ever did in my life.Until today,I can still see and smell those bodies.For several years immediately after this ordeal,I had nightmares about the animals that had attacked our boat.They were drowning also and would immediately swim to anything solid that stopped in the water.A large portion of the bodies had to be buried in a common grave because of lack of identification and the fact that many of the possible relatives who could have claimed the bodies were likewise killed by the storm.Row aafter row of partially eaten,bloated bodies.Tomestones uprooted by the storm were pushed inland 10-15 miles.Bodies and coffins were half floating everywhere.What a nightmare!
Mas098,
My husband's family lives in the Lake Charles area and even though he was only 5 yrs old when Audrey hit, he remembers what a terrible hurricane it was. He said they had more than 30 relatives and friends staying in their home, it was a brick home and safer than many had.
His father and his uncles also had to do what you did, they had friends in Cameron and they helped search and recover the dead.
Welcome to erosion 101.
Without allowing the Mississippi River and other waterways to naturally flood and replenish the marshes and deltas they're gonna lose the entire southern half of Louisiana eventually.
That is not neccessarily true.The building of the Intercoastal canal has caused and continues to cause an enormous amout of damage when a storm comes through.The reason New Orleans was hit so badly was because of the exixtence of the intercoastal canal.It cut off natural water flows to the delta Gulf.Rerouted and implimented new waterways with insufficient reatianing walls for when it flooded.The Corp of Engiineers has been called out on this mess for decades.Lawsuits remain unsettled.The Corp rerouted one large tributary of the Mississippi River,the Achafalya River so much,it put my parents birth home(Bayou Chene) 30 feet under the water.Hundreds were diplaced with no compensation.One day,theycame in and said the river is going to rise ,so you should leave.Good bye!Both of my parents and their perents had been born their.The closest you can get today is a boat ride over it!
The Dutch have done a wonderful job of controling their waterways. We could learn much from them. However, the most important lesson to learn, is to cremate all bodies. Stop using up valuable land, creating parks for the dead.
Ohhhhhhhhh, Dammmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, that gives a WHOLE new meaning on "Im's" going Bone Fishing ! What kind of bait do I use now?
Cremation is my choice, Ashes to ashes and dust to dust. Life is for the poor wretches still alive.
Why should the government be worried about any grave yard. The people buy plots, the owners of said grave yard makes money. It is their concern if something goes wrong.
Remember folks the graveyard is not run by our government. Only rule over.
as some has mentioned the graves date back to 1800. Hell I don't want my tax dollar going to rebury.
(pardon the spelling)
Polar Ice Caps Melting!!!!
Cemeteries are nothing more than human remains land fills. They are a waste of open space.
Cremation is the way to go.
Its amazing just how many excuses there are for being stupid.
I just want to add my two cents here, I don't normally comment, but the comments here are really making me angry. Let New Orleans go, move everyone inland. Well the areas, that they are writing about in the article aren't part of New Orleans. They are close, but they are not New Orleans. Second, they are oil ports for the Gulf of Mexico, and very few people actually live in these areas. However, when one of the residents passes away, should that persons family have every right to dispose of their remains as they wish? And it is part of our Cajun culture to bury our dead in the ground. How dare any of you judge the hard working people of South Louisiana? Our ancestors came to Louisiana in the 1700's and carved out a whole existance, not just New Orleans. The west might have been difficult, but it is nothing compared to the swamps of Southern Louisiana. Next, I have to say, yeah, we live in Hurricane prone areas, and we know it. At least, those of us who don't live in New Orleans. You don't see those people of South Louisiana putting a hand out asking for help, in my experience, it is the other way around, how can we help you. So the people you see on tv and in the papers complaining, ask yourself, why do you see those people? Because its a salacious news story! Learn to think for yourselves people. And lastly, just because we have hurricanes and land below sea level, we have to leave the land we made for ourselves? Well, where do you propose we go? California, the west coast? No, earthquakes and wildfires. How about the east coast? No, hurricanes, snow, nor'easters, and overcrowding. Oh, the Midwest! No, fires, drought, loss of farmland to development, well we have to eat don't we, flooding, blizzards, and earthquakes. Mother Nature is every where we go. EVERYWHERE. You learn to live with the cards you are dealt, and With the exception of the welfare state in New Orleans, us cajuns do a pretty good job of taking care of ourselves.
Amen, dude, Amen!
So true, PissedOffCajun ... Well Said !!
My husband's family is mostly around the Lake Charles area, some still live around Eunice and Lafayette too ... they have been there for generations, and they have never taken a HANDOUT or HELP from ANYONE except their own neighbor !!!
They took care of themselves and helped many friends and lost some, after Hurricane Audrey in the 50's. They suffered greatly after Hurricane Rita in 2005 but they took care of EACH OTHER and STARTED WORKING on the debris, the downed trees and THEY CLEANED UP as SOON as they could !! They didn't wait around on the State, the Feds or FEMA for help ... they didn't whine or feel sorry for themselves. They cleared trees, dumped trash and patched each others roofs. They all helped their NEIGHBORS. They didn't expect someone ELSE to DO IT FOR THEM ... CAJUNS & the other good LOUISIANANS GOT UP and DID IT THEMSELVES !!!
I was in Delacroix, LA in 2004. At that time you could ride any state route and see casket's buried in cemetaries above ground, yet they were all surrounded by marsh land. So, this is just another non-story in an attempt to facilitate the shrinking/sinking coast line enviro theory in the USA. The freakin area is at sea level for God's sake,,they obviously buried these people on stilts to avoid the rising tides etc. HENNY PENNY HENNY PENNY,,,THE SKY IS FALLING!!!
And that is one more reason I am going to be cremated.