NEWS

Vermilionville event focuses on protecting our rivers

Bill Decker
Louisiana

For all the quiet beauty Louisiana people can find in their native surroundings, the environment often turns into a battlefield.

The Legislature is being asked to block a lawsuit designed to hold energy companies accountable for damage to sensitive coastal wetlands. A pipeline designed to carry oil-bearing tar sands from Canada to Texas has sparked debate all along its path.

The International Panel on Climate Change issued a renewed warning Sunday about the consequences of climate change to a nation far more divided on the issue than scientists are.

But on Sunday, visitors were able to see a gentler version of environmental activism during the Earth Day observance at Vermilionville, the Cajun-Creole living history attraction.

Booths at the event focused on the importance of clean rivers and the need to conserve Louisiana's natural history.

Earth Day — technically April 22 this year — has been a part of the national calendar since 1970. It's a day devoted to showing support for environmental protection.

The families that wandered through the period-accurate south Louisiana homes at Vermilionville Sunday might have run into the booth manned by Dane Thibodeaux of the Teche Project.

Part of his booth was set up as a quiz about how long it takes different pieces of trash to break down in nature. Newspaper will be gone in a couple of weeks. But a plastic water bottle requires more than 400 years.

"It gives you a picture that when you throw that bottle out, it'll never go away — not in our lifetime," Thibodeaux said. "It's to help people be self-aware of where that trash is going."

Thibodeaux and more than 70 volunteers know where the trash goes. They take part in periodic attempts to pull the trash from the Teche. Tons of trash are pulled from the river, along with a few cars.

The project has about 100 members, each of whom pays $10.

"It helps us put on events like this," Thibodeaux said. "It tells people that low-impact creation exists on the Teche, and we don't have to use it for a dump."

At the next booth, Charlie Wyatt, president of the Bayou Vermilion Preservation Association, offers a related message.

"It's an awareness campaign," Wyatt said. "Everything you throw into the storm drain goes directly to the river, bypassing the water treatment plant.

"All the leaves, the grass, the plastic cups, the Styrofoam cups, all end up in the river. Obviously, that's detrimental to the river life as well as the aesthetics of the river."

The National Garden Clubs picked the awareness campaign as the Best Water Project in the United States.

Harold Schoeffler of the Sierra Club could point to three concrete plans coming to fruition.

One is a new state park on 128 acres on Lake Catahoula, established for shared use as a state park and by the Boy Scouts.

Another is the designation of a 140 square miles of the Atchafalaya Basin, stretching from Lake Dauterive to Grand Avoly, as a National Monument Site to protect 20 archaeological sites and cypress trees whose ages exceed 1,000 years.

The closest to completion is a 55-mile bike trail from the new Henderson boat landing to the Bayou Teche at Calumet.

"It's something that needs no bridges," Schoeffler said. "There's very little to do but dedicate it as a biking, hiking and equestrian trail. I think it's something that will bring a lot of people to the Basin to appreciate one of the beautiful parts of our country."