Time to Save the Atchafalaya

Time To Save The Atchafalaya

Abstract

The Atchafalaya Basin is America's largest river swamp and functions as a major distribution stream for the Mississippi and Red rivers. The Atchafalaya takes 30 percent of the combined flow of the Red River and the Mississippi and feeds it into a system of lakes and ever-smaller bayous that spread into swamp and marsh wetlands. The Atchafalaya is one of the most biologically productive and diverse areas anywhere in the world. Today the Basin is a mere shadow of what it once was. The Atchafalaya has suffered wave upon wave of degradation and continues to be destroyed every day from the development associated with population growth, agriculture, logging, pollution and manipulation of the river system. A mandate from Congress to the Corps of Engineers requires the return of the Atchafalaya to more natural conditions. Working with state and federal agencies, the Corps of Engineers is using restoring the water flow, sediment diversion, marsh creation, and shoreline protection measures as cornerstones in returning one of the worlds most biologically productive and diverse areas to it's rich heritage.

Time To Save The Atchafalaya

Rick Stanley

Introduction

The Atchafalaya Basin, America's largest river swamp, is a near million-acre maze of picturesque streams and quiet bayous in south-central Louisiana, just west of Baton Rouge. The name Atchafalaya means both "river" and "wetlands area." The name comes from the word "hacha falaia" which means "long-river" in the language of the native Choctaw tribe.

The Atchafalaya functions as a major distribution stream for the Mississippi and Red rivers and the Atchafalaya River's waters rise and fall with those of the Mississippi River. The Atchafalaya takes 30 percent of the combined flow of the Red River and the Mississippi and feeds it into a system of lakes and ever-smaller bayous that spread into swamp and marsh wetlands.

The Atchafalaya Basin is an Everglades-scale natural resource that deserves the same national attention to its preservation. The Atchafalaya is one of the most biologically productive and diverse areas anywhere in the world. It is largely unprotected through state or national park status - the Atchafalaya National Wildlife Refuge is a mere 15,000 acres.

One-half of the migratory bird species in the United States use the Atchafalaya each year as these forested wetlands provide essential food resources that the migrants store for their long flight. The Atchafalaya is home to 300 species of birds, including 26,000 nesting pairs of herons, egrets, and ibises as well as crawfish, crabs, shrimp, frogs, snakes, nutrias, beavers, raccoons, foxes, alligators, and black bears. Fish yields have exceeded 1,000 pounds per acre. The Atchafalaya Basin is the most popular fishing area in Louisiana. It is considered a fisherman's paradise, supporting largemouth bass, spotted bass, white bass, crappie, bream, and catfish.

Method

Today the Basin is a mere shadow of what it once was. The Atchafalaya has suffered wave upon wave of degradation and continues to be destroyed every day from the development associated with population growth, agriculture, logging, pollution and manipulation of the river system.

Most of the Atchafalaya Basin is privately held. By the late 1920's, landowners had logged out the old cypress trees and soon after began to lease mineral rights to oil and gas companies. Oil and gas development only made matters worse. Beginning in the 1940s, hundreds of miles of pipelines and navigation canals were punched through the Basin's woods and across its swamplands, interfering with natural water flow and trapping huge piles of sediment. Lakes shriveled, wetlands began drying up and in many areas of the Basin, fish and crawfish harvests declined.

Prompted by the historic flood of 1927 that devastated the lower Mississippi River valley, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has since spent almost $2 billion on flood control in the Basin, including enclosing more than a half-million acres of swamp with 450 miles of levees. It is now a 125-mile-long chute, 15 miles wide, surrounded by 25-foot-tall levees that transformed the entire Atchafalaya Basin from a sponge that absorbed floodwaters into an emergency valve that will move water downstream quickly. The idea is to send excess water down the Atchafalaya and save New Orleans, one of the most vulnerable potential disaster areas in the country. The natural flow had been reworked so it practically worked backwards.

Dozens of natural bayous have also been sealed off, and more than 100 million cubic yards of earth have been dredged and its waters have been straightened. Much of what is left is choking in silt and blotched with stagnant ponds.

Much of the northwest part of the Basin has already been turned into soybean and cornfields. But farther south, vast stretches of the swamp remain and here wetland loss continues at an alarming rate. The total wetland loss in the area was approximately 3,760 acres between 1932 and 1990 . The average loss from 1974 through 1990 is 87 acres per year. Wetland loss in this area is site dependent; loss is primarily due to erosion, human activities, and natural conversion.

Without protected status, the Atchafalaya faces these threats :

* Continued logging of the cypress trees that remain and the bottomland hardwoods.

* Lack of public access through private holdings restricts public use and support for conservation.

* Dredging that changes the natural hydraulics, accelerates siltation, and creates oxygen-deprived dead zones where aquatic life cannot survive.

* Increased siltation that creates dry land from wetland.

* At least one lake in the Basin is polluted with mercury, and a fish advisory has been

issued.

* Levees that cut off freshwater flow, harming fishing and creating salt-water intrusion.

Results

In 1985, Congress approved a compromise flood control plan hammered out by the Corps of Engineers, state agencies, landowners, timber interests, fishers,