From the Editor: Benefit brunch helps 'Save the Basin'

LAFAYETTE — For a couple of weeks last month, Tri-City area people were reminded again how powerful the Atchafalaya River can be.
As the river and its associated waterways rose, officials talked about opening spillway gates, and gates in the Morgan City and Berwick flood walls were closed. Legislators talked about a permanent solution for Bayou Chene flooding. Beyond that, the river was going to do what it was going to do, and people were powerless to do much besides fill sandbags.
But one group of south Louisiana people believes that the Atchafalaya and the 900 square miles of unique ecosystem it nourishes aren’t invulnerable and need protection. The group, the Atchafalaya Basinkeeper, held a fundraiser brunch Sunday at Lafayette’s Artmosphere Bistro to raise money for their fight.
“We’re saving it from the people who want to do things that are damaging to the environment, to a place that’s one of the most fantastic areas for ecotourism in this country,” said Greg Guirard, the writer and photographer who emceed Sunday’s event. “It’s also the basis for the livelihood for hundreds and hundreds of crawfishermen, catfishermen, people who have been at this for 150 to 200 years.”
The group’s fight goes to a Baton Rouge courtroom today in the form of a lawsuit filed by Atchafalaya Basinkeeper and other groups against the state Department of Natural Resources. The target is a plan by F.A.S. Environmental Services to create an injection well transfer station near Belle River.
St. Martin Parish denied a rezoning request from F.A.S., but the DNR issued a permit for the same facility.
The Atchafalaya Basinkeeper also monitors what it says is the damage created by canals cut through the Basin for the oil and industry and logging activity, legal and otherwise.
Dean Wilson, executive director of Atchafalaya Basinkeeper, can claim some victories in the group’s environmental battles.
One is a deal with three big-box retailers to limit sales of cypress mulch in Louisiana, eliminating the motivation for cutting down some cypress trees.
But Wilson said other threats remain, including the use of Basin cypress for heat-generating wood pellets. He pointed to Louisiana economic development incentives for a Baton Rouge-area company that wants to ship wood pellets to Europe, where that energy source is considered by some to be green and sustainable.
“I can’t understand why the state of Louisiana will not recognize the fantastic value of a place like the Atchafalaya Basin,” Guirard said.
Information from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers indicates the existence of plans to harvest 500,000 acres of the remaining 840,000 acres of cypress swamp, Wilson said.
And he believes that could be the end of the Basin as it exists now, he said. Just as this second-growth cypress doesn’t represent a complete recovery from the clear-cutting that occurred into the 1920s, the cypress swamp would be unlikely to return to its present state if significant numbers of trees were cut down, Wilson said.
“It would be a tremendous tragedy to cut them down again,” Wilson said. “It was bad enough the first time.”
The Basinkeeper often works as part of a coalition with other organizations, such as the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic and SouthWinds, a group of Alabama pilots. They’ve helped Basinkeeper by helping the group find logging roads built without the required wetlands permits, another tool to use against illegal logging.
Guirard and Wilson both have worked for decades as commercial fishermen in the Basin, although they arrived there by very different routes.
Wilson, the son of an American father and a Spanish mother, was raised in Spain and came here in 1984 to prepare for a trip down the Amazon. He wanted to acclimate himself to the heat and mosquitoes before heading to South America.
“The first time I saw all the beautiful trees, all the greenery, all the water, with white birds and eagles flying through them, I thought I was in paradise,” Wilson said.
Guirard has lived in the Basin off and on for more than 70 years. He has also lived in the Carolinas and Central America.
“Every time it gets to be October and November, I get pulled back to the Atchafalaya Basin,” Guirard said. “There’s something about being out in the swamp by yourself that seems to suck the poison of civilization out of you.”
Bill Decker is managing editor of The Daily Review. Reach him at bdecker@daily-review.com.