Outdoorsmen, environmentalists come together for Basinkeepers fundraiser

LAFAYETTE — Hunters and fishermen, environmentalists and conservationists, and Cajun music fans hungry for gumbo and a bottomless bloody mary bar all gathered from across the Teche Area on Sunday afternoon to help save the Atchafalaya Basin. 

Louisiana State Sen. Fred Mills addressed the crowd, between sets of live music, at the fourth annual Atchafalaya Basinkeepers’ “Save the Basin” fund raiser, praising the local environmental group’s efforts. 

Held at Artmosphere, in Lafayette, the event featured live performances by the bands Sweet Cecilia, Celjun, Brass Mimosa, Walter Pousson, Forest Huval and Rebecca Richard. There was an art auction as well, featuring bayou and swamp-inspired art, including the work of New Iberia photographer Margaret Melancon. 

“The crown jewel of Acadiana is the Atchafalaya Basin,” Mills said. “Please support this cause. It is my honor to work with the Atchafalaya Basinkeepers.”

The Atchafalaya Basinkeepers — a local branch of the larger Waterkeeper Alliance network — is a non-profit organization that monitors and enforces laws regarding water usage and pollution across the basin, on the one hand, and leads educational outreach programs on the other, according to Basinkeeper and Executive Director Dean Wilson. 

A local commercial fisherman for nearly two decades, Wilson joined the Sierra Club in 2000 when he saw what the logging of cypress trees for mulch production was doing to the area, and joined the Basinkeepers in 2004. 

“I could not see myself walking around the earth at a time in history when we were destroying the basin forever,” he said. “The Atchafalaya is one of the wonders of the world. It is the largest wetland forest in North America.” 

Now, he and several fishermen and conservationists said, the basin’s most pressing issue stems from the sediment buildup caused by oil and gas pipeline installation. 

“I’m from Catahoula,” said Shane Doucet, a member of the Basinkeepers and a lifelong wild crawfisherman. “It used to be, you live in Catahoula, you fish Catahoula.” But, he said, a pipeline went in in 1979 and by 1985 the fishing dried up. 

“It sanded up so bad, you had to move six or seven miles over and learn a new bayou. Now that one is dead, too. So you moved again and then you’re all piled up on one another. You gotta argue with the boys in the next bayou, who say, ‘why you fishing here?’ Where else can we go?” 

The oil pipes run west to east, transporting oil from Texas across the Gulf States. But the water flows from north to south, carrying sediment with it. The pipelines and their spoil banks — the large mounds of dirt dug up and piled beside them when they’re installed — act as daming agents, inhibiting the natural flow of water out to the gulf. Not only does the aquatic life in the basin depend on that flow, but the sediment that gets stopped piles onto the spoil banks and at the bottom of the basin instead of being deposited along the Gulf Coast, which also contributes to coastal erosion. 

Doucet and others have begun naming the more prominent spoil banks across the Atchafalaya. 

“We take people to Mt. Foster to show them how bad it is,” he said of one well known buildup. “That’s where we go mountain climbing in the basin.” 

“That is 56 feet above sea level,” said Harold Schoeffler, chairman of the Sierra Club’s Delta Chapter. “That one’s so high you’ve got to climb it with rope.” 

The sediment is also filling swamps, they say, creating a flood risk for the entire Teche Area. 

“It’s like a bathtub. If you fill it with dirt, when the water starts to flow, there is less it can hold before spilling over,” Wilson said. “The Atchafalaya Basin protects St. Martinville, New Iberia, Lafayette, Morgan City — all of it — from flooding in high water events.” 

The current big threat now is Energy Transfer Partners’ Bayou Bridge pipeline, which would run 163 miles through south Louisiana, from Lake Charles to St. James Parish — right through the Atchafalaya Basin.

“They’ve made promises, but they’ve got two other pipelines in the basin with violations,” said Jody Meche, a third generation crawfisherman, a Henderson city councilman and a member of the Louisiana Crawfish Producers Association-West. “I just don’t trust them.” 

“We’re not opposed to anyone using the basin, just make sure you restore it,” said Mills. 

The fundraiser ran from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday. It is the primary fundraiser for the small non-profit. 

“We do this to protect the Atchafalaya Basin for our kids and our grandkids,” said Wilson. “It’s all about them, it’s not about us anymore.”