Ambitious plan for a channel to the Gulf

By JIM BRADSHAW
There have been many ambitious plans for the Vermilion River since Europeans first began to settle on its banks, but one of the most ambitious was proposed in 1918 by an organization known as the Atchafalaya Teche Vermilion Company of Lafayette. Its plan was to create a continuous navigable channel from Bayou Courtableau in St. Landry Parish to the Gulf of Mexico below Abbeville.
The route would follow Bayou Courtableau to Bayou Teche, cut through the Ruth Canal east of Lafayette to the Vermilion River, then down the Vermilion to the Gulf.
Rice farmers, who needed irrigation water, liked the idea. So did some others who thought that it would open new areas for exploitation. But when the Army engineers studied the concept, they said it might be a good idea, but not good enough for them to pay for it.
On July 12, 1918, the Big Boss of the Army Engineers, Secretary of War Newton D. Baker, reported to Congress on a “preliminary examination of [the] Atchafalaya River and Bayous Courtableau, Teche, and Vermilion, with a view to forming navigable connections between said streams.”
“A navigable connection between the Atchafalaya River and Bayou Vermilion would afford water transportation for farm products, such as sugar cane, rice, corn, and truck, and to serve the lumber and timber interests along the route,” Baker reported.
“The immediate necessity, however, does not seem apparent, as the section is adequately served by railroads. The banks of Bayou Courtableau, below Port Barre, are practically uninhabited, heavily timbered, and subject to overflows from the Atchafalaya River. Bayou Teche, from Port Barre to Breaux Bridge, flows through a thickly settled country, which is very fertile and highly cultivated. Two railroads, the Arnaudville branch of the Southern Pacific, and the New Iberia & Northern [branch of Gulf Coast Lines] parallel the stream.”
The engineers found that the principal beneficiaries of the new navigation would be the Port Barre Lumber and Tie Co. and rice farmers alongside the waterways. That being the case, Baker reported, “the people locally interested should contribute largely [to] any improvements made.”
Local interests were interested enough to push for the construction of the Ruth Canal, which was opened in 1920, and to continue pushing for other waterways improvements.
The weather gave them a boost in 1924 and 1925, two of the driest years on record in south Louisiana. During each of those years, the Vermilion River fell so low that about 50,000 acres of rice land under irrigation from the stream had either no water or water ruined by saltwater creeping in from the Gulf. Interest was revived in building the channel, not so much for navigation, but for the irrigation water that it would supply.
But what the weather gaveth, the weather tooketh away — with the Great Flood of 1927. With that deluge, Army Engineers working in south Louisiana started thinking more about flood control than about navigation, or even irrigation.
Instead of making a connection between the Atchafalaya and the Vermilion, the engineers decided that the existing connections should be blocked by levees so that floodwater coming down the Atchafalaya could be contained.
Nearly a half century later, the Corps of Engineers finally recommended diversion of Atchafalaya River water into the Teche and Vermilion, but this had nothing to do with navigation, and there were still to be no breaks in the levees.
Huge pumps were put into place above Krotz Springs to lift the water out of the Atchafalaya, over the levees, and into a channel that eventually feeds into Bayou Teche and the Vermilion. The pumps are used to prevent stagnation and pollution in the Vermilion and keep it at levels that will help prevent saltwater intrusion.
You can contact Jim Bradshaw at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589,