Columns

Rice farming became the mainstay of our prairies after the railroad cut across them in 1880. Southern Pacific shipped 2 million pounds of south Louisiana rice to New Orleans in 1886. Those shipments grew to 200 million pounds over the next decade, and that was just the beginning. All of that rice needed more water than our rivers and streams could provide, and that brought big trouble in the Mermentau basin in the early 1900s.

traveler and writer Charles Dudley Warner rowed early one spring morning, “while the dew was still heavy” down Bayou Petit Anse. “in Petite Anse means “little cove.” The bayou runs along the west side of Avery Island, then flows generally south into Vermilion Bay. Warner described his delightful boat ride in a long article about “The Acadian Land” in Harper’s Magazine in February 1887.

Spring always brings a rise in the Mississippi River, and that almost always brings a rise in the debate over if, or when, the Atchafalaya will capture most of the Mississippi’s water.
It would be a really bad thing if that happened. Ships could no longer get to Baton Rouge and only small ones to New Orleans. Salty water creeping up the river from the Gulf would corrode pipes and taint drinking water. A score of industries depending on fresh water would shut down. And that’s not even half of what could happen.