'It’s just common sense that you can’t destroy the thing that sustains your life.'

It was a hot Louisiana day in June at the Myette Point Boat Landing when Stephen Landry pulled up with boat and trailer.
Landry’s self-built wooden skiff is a working man’s boat: He is a crawfisherman in the Atchafalaya Basin, and an inventor of sorts.
Despite the oppressive heat, the boat ride to Buffalo Cove was cooler, and the scenery magnificent.
But today he is concerned about pollution in this vast water system that has been dubbed “America’s Wetland.” It is the third largest basin of its kind in the world.
A few facts about the basin make clear the importance of this natural wonder. As cited on www.louisiana-destinations.com, the Atchafalaya Basin is the nation’s largest river swamp, containing almost one million acres of the nation’s most significant bottomland hardwoods, swamps, bayous and backwater lakes. The Atchafalaya River meanders from near Simmesport southward past Pierre Part down to Morgan City and the Gulf of Mexico. The Atchafalaya Basin is a unique combination of wetlands, bayous, marshes, estuaries, and river delta area. It covers an area 20 miles wide and 150 miles long, and at 1.4 million acres it is the nation’s largest swamp wilderness, with 885,000 acres of forested wetlands and 517,000 acres of marshland.
Landry has concerns, as many do, about the quality of the water in this environ. He says he’s talked to people “that test the water, and they’re not spending any money. They’re not testing the waters.”
The basin, as seen on historic maps prior to the levee system building after the historic and catastrophic flood of 1927, was once much larger. Subsequent construction to prevent future flooding constrained its flow, and the basin nearly at once began to silt up. A modern map of the wetlands shows a strikingly different picture.
The skiff diverts to a smaller waterway, and winds through pristine waters, though the basin is still high. Then there is Buffalo Cove, and its condition is appalling.
Once pristine and an expanse of clear, black-green water, now it is clogged full of “water lilies,” as we locals call them, properly designated “water hyacinth.” An invasive, water hyacinth is thought to be native to the Amazon River basin of South America. It was introduced to the United States in 1884 at the Cotton States Exposition in New Orleans, Louisiana. It spread across the southeastern U. S. and was identified in Florida in 1895.
Those plants have likely thrived on the release of fertilizer from the 33 states that the Mississippi River drains. Some of that runoff flows into the Atchafalaya after it is diverted at the Old River Control Structure in central Louisiana.
“The only solution is, you have to clean the water,” Landry said, seated in the bow of his wooden skiff in Buffalo Cove, once known as one of the most idyllic locations in the basin.
Landry, a Four Corners native and Franklin resident since 1972, a machinist and a former McDermott employee, Landry began shrimping in 1985, and later crawfishing.
While water hyacinth has spread into almost all waterways in the south and beyond, it is admittedly an excellent filtration plant. “I think that’s what it was made for,” Landry said.
In truth, it is a beautiful plant, a characteristic that probably aided in its spread after 1884. Its growth is a jade green, and its flower a purple or lavender.
The LSU AgCenter, in a 2019 article titled “Nutrient Pollution Reduced by Swamps Connected to Rivers,” cites, “If water leaves a river channel and flows through these wetlands, it is well known that nutrients—especially nitrogen—are removed from floodwater when it encounters low-oxygen wetland sediments, and pollution is reduced when it returns to the channel…At the same time rivers have become more polluted with nutrient runoff, they have also become more confined within their channels by extensive flood control work over the past two centuries. Many former floodplains that once received floodwater and contributed to water quality are now partially or completely disconnected from rivers.” (Richard Keim, 2018)
The changes since 1993 to today are obvious, he says, using Buffalo Cove as example. “You could come in here, and there were lilies, but nothing like this. I would think fertilizer in general. Common sense tells you, that all over the northwest, at the top of the Mississippi River, is silt. Silt carries the fertilizer. Years back Nebraska, I think, built ditches to drain the water into, to settle it, and then it went into the river where it knocked out a lot of nutrients, and helped save their top soil.”
Solutions are, unfortunately, a matter of politics. “It’s just common sense that you can’t destroy the thing that sustains your life,” he noted, he said while checking a crawfish trap in Buffalo Cove. It contains only a few mud bugs. “The cancer rate…they’re not telling the truth about the cancer rate.”
Nitrogen and phosphates are likely the culprits, Landry said. There are probably other chemicals in the water that arrive in Louisiana from more than 30 states and vast drainage systems.
A Conservation Habitats & Species Assessment by the state noted as far back as 2005 that “The suspected causes for these water quality problems include: fecal coliform, suspended solids, sedimentation/siltation, mercury, turbidity, and low concentration of dissolved oxygen. The suspected sources of the water quality problems include: crop production, petroleum activities, channelization, dredging, industrial point sources, waste storage/tank leaks, and spills.”
“I was told by the Justice Department itself,” Landry said. “If you want something done you can’t go to the top, you have to go to someone under him. You have to get to the ones we elected who are not doing their job.”
Many years ago, the machinist in Landry prompted him to create a cutter machine that can be mounted to the bow of his skiff. When lowered into an expanse of even the densest water hyacinth, at speed the cutters make short work of the invasive plant.
He has been successful in patenting the design and authorized manufacture of it with an outside company.
“I’ve been here for 25 years,” he said. “I know I can cut the vegetation. I have to sit back and wait until these guys understand that you can’t continue poisoning (the lilies) because when you do, it sinks. Then the contaminants are on the bottom. So it’s not about going in there to eliminate, but to reduce it.”
By cutting the water hyacinth, the individual plant material pieces will—hopefully—flow out and eventually make their way to the Gulf of Mexico, rather than sink to the bottom of the basin.
The Environmental Protection Agency released information that, “Manmade locks and dams were created to control flooding and create deeper waters for steamboats. However, this system made it more difficult for water to be absorbed and made flooding even more detrimental. The convenience of a trustworthy mode of transportation and a constant water supply encouraged agriculture, industries, and cities to spread to areas along the river. Productivity from these areas resulted in large amounts of nutrients being discharged from the river system into the Gulf of Mexico. These nutrients have contributed to hypoxia.”
As for Landry, he says he’ll continue to try to raise awareness of the problem…or problems.
He repeats, in conclusion, “It’s just common sense that you can’t destroy the thing that sustains your life.”