Deep in the sloughs behind Don Ristroph’s family farm, cypress have towered over surrounding trees, high grass and crop rows for centuries, and, he says, in one or two cases, perhaps half of a millennium or more.
On a Mississippi River bend known as Point Pleasant, the cypress swamp and its ancient trees south of Plaquemine are in the path of at least one of the final routes for a long-awaited river bridge and could be negatively affected by being on the edge of another, Ristroph says.
Designated a state natural area, Ristroph’s cypress forest on the west bank of Iberville Parish presents another, potentially complicating wrinkle in the running debate over where to build the $2 billion bridge and route its 600-foot-wide approach corridors linking the Mississippi bridge to La. 1 and La. 30…