“Louisiana’s 3 million acres of wetlands are lost at the rate about 75 square kilometers annually, but reducing these losses is proving to be difficult and costly.”

S. Jeffress Williams

U.S. Geological Survey

We Louisiana

Who We ARe

Our Mission: To implement our unconventional technology and a new way of thinking about how to save the wetlands from erosion and ocean level rise, while producing renewable energy and saving millions of dollars of spending and revenue loss to our great state of Louisiana.

“We Louisiana” was formed around the sole inventor of our Sediment Capture Syphon Barge and Tide Pump technologies, Richard C. Russo. After years of development, these systems are finally entering the stages of implementation with the help of individuals and several U.S. environmental agencies. Russo’s children, Alicia Boudreaux and Dominic Russo have joined the team to aide in fundraising for the creation of the first scale size prototype.

What we're doing to save the wetlands

There is an unconventional way to make every penny spent in the wetlands effort to be positive for the purpose of reducing the devastating effects of sea level rise. If we don’t stop the effects of the ocean from rising, everything we are doing in the wetlands will eventually be over topped. Making south Louisiana uninhabitable. This patent pending technology does not use fossil fuels and it does not grind fish or marine life. This makes it cost effective and environmentally friendly. It uses an innovative syphon design to capture, remove, and transport away sediment that burdens almost all water channels, drainage tributaries, and ports. In addition to the “Sediment Capture Syphon System” there is a second patented apparatus “The Tide Pump” that captures the continuous energy of the tides, which can be coordinated to compound wave, wind, solar, and precipitation to become a “green energy engine”.

Imagine dredging the Mississippi or any river, port, canal, channel or open water area without the need for fossil fuels; while also maintaining the desired depth autonomously. Then imagine the same system can repurpose those burdensome ocean-water displacing sediments to build habitable barrier islands across coastlines or marshes that can provide storm surge breaks, halt and even reverse erosion by building land faster than it erodes, saving marshland and estuaries from salt water intrusion, and on top of that produce green renewable energy that could effectively sustain the integrity of the system. Hard to imagine, right??? Even harder to imagine this could be achieved without high powered motors and fossil fuels!! Today we face what many fear are insurmountable challenges of climate change, ocean level rise, and erosion and the resources needed to reverse its effects on society. This completely unorthodox approach may just be our best shot to make a meaningful impact. It can help coastal communities not just in Louisiana but all around the world to stay in place, save our invaluable fertile deltas, and give man a fighting chance to overcome these cost prohibitive challenges of our dynamic planet. There is no question about it, to successfully implement this technology is beneficial to mankind throughout the world.

Sediment Capture Syphon Barge

The first phase of the project starts with building a full size prototype of the syphon system on a barge and on land. This system is able to capture and move sediment using 100% renewable resources.

Tide Pump

The next phase is to implement the tide pump. This system will capture the energy provided by the tide and make it usable for many different applications.