02/02/2005     

Cover Story
From Trash to Treasure: Keeping the Vermilion River clean is an ongoing challenge.
By Marie Elizabeth de Mahy

For 20 years, the Bayou Vermilion District has had its hands full restoring Lafayette’s abused watershed. After enjoying considerable success in cleaning up the river, the BVD team is looking toward loftier goals without losing sight of its day-to-day challenges. Rain falls steadily outside the airy, wooden building occupied by the Bayou Vermilion District (BVD). Sanjay Kharod, who was appointed community outreach coordinator for the agency in August, stares at the muddy river framed by a large open window.

“I don't know if you notice, but the river is floating the other way,” he says. “It does that sometimes.” The normally south-flowing river heads north when a large pulse of rainwater washes down the Coulee Mine. According to Kharod, heavy rain and flooding present some of the biggest challenges in the Vermilion River’s restoration because of the large amount of impervious cover and concrete parking lots in Lafayette.

“The big thing is the drainage,” says Kharod. “We get too much water, too often and too fast. When it rains, the river rises several feet, and it's not a gradual rise.” The heavy rain actually reverses the effects of one of BVD’s key innovations in trash control —  buoys that float in the water and collect litter. Kharod says heavy rain will override the buoys and release the trash back into the river. “Right now you can see there’s trash all over the place,” says Kharod. “It’s from people throwing it on the ground, which then gets washed into the coulee or drainage ditch. And that drainage ditch eventually winds its way down to this river.”

Kharod says he is currently investigating ways of holding back the water, like building catchment basins, which he describes as “mini swamps that have plants and trees in them.” Kharod also says he would like to bring back the tradition of the cistern. “It is traditionally used to collect water for watering later, but also so that it doesn’t go running off your roof, down into the asphalt, down into our bayou,” says Kharod, whose list of ideas for improving the watershed seems endless. Kharod’s plan is to broaden the scope of the Bayou Vermilion District, while at the same time reverting back to some of the goals outlined in the BVD’s original master plan. “There’s a desire to go back to the idealistic ideas of what the master plan thought of,” says Kharod.

The BVD, developed in 1983 under the leadership of former Lafayette Chamber of Commerce President Robert Cole, was established with the primary goal of improving the quality of water in Bayou Vermilion. According to Cole, the river was in desperate need of help. “It really needed somebody to do something. It had become a liability more than an asset,” says Cole. “Before the Bayou Vermilion District came along, there were trees in the river, there was debris, there were cars. It was just horrible.” To solve the problem, Cole formed a committee with several business people from the Chamber. Cole says the committee’s first step was creating a governmental entity. The Bayou Vermilion District was formed as soon as the committee's legislation was approved.

“That body started making rules and regulations to govern the Vermilion River,” says Cole. “We hired boats to clean up the river. We hired a patrol boat to police the river. And there were all kinds of projects that were done on the river to make it prettier and to make it safer. In some cases, there was dredging that was done.” The restoration efforts were assisted by another project that kicked off about the same time — the Teche-Vermilion Freshwater Project.

Cole says the project helped because it pumped fresh water into the Bayou Vermilion, as well as the Bayou Teche. “It put a steady stream of water flowing down the river at all times,” says Cole. Overall, according to Cole, the Vermilion has undergone dramatic changes in the past 30 years. “Comparing it today to 1970, it’s daylight and dark,” he says. “It’s still got a long way to go, but it’s a tremendous improvement. “They’re continuing to do a good job, and thank goodness they are. Because if they weren’t, the river would quickly go back to the way it used to be,” he adds.

Kharod agreed that keeping trash out of the river is an ongoing process. He says that the BVD watershed team goes out regularly and picks up “barrels and barrels of trash.” Although Kharod says BVD has control of the trash problem, his goal is for there to be no trash in the river at all. “One of the best ways to get people to stop throwing is by doing community outreach,” says Kharod. "That’s making them understand that the non-point source pollution, which is the pollution that comes from all of us — as opposed to coming from a factory pipe, is our responsibility. And we have to figure out ways to handle that.”

Kharod adds that he also is working to portray the BVD’s image as more than just “the guys who pick up trash. “The shift has now gone from just focusing on picking up trash and doing workshops at schools to more general public outreach and getting people to start thinking about ‘watershed’ and what that means,” says Kharod.

By, definition, a watershed is an area of land that drains into a body of water, but Kharod says it is much more. “It’s really just the land and the water combined. It’s your toilet. It’s your trash can. It’s your lawn. It’s all that, plus all the wildlife that’s here,” says Kharod. According to Kharod, the BVD currently is visiting area schools and teaching students about the watershed. In addition, he says the BVD is trying to organize a summer environmental camp around the water where students will have a chance to learn about the river — hands-on.

“We’ve done workshops with other people who have camps where they go through the mud and look for the microinvertebrate that are in the water,” says Kharod. “Depending on the bugs you see, it tells you how healthy the water is.”  Thanks to a recent state grant, the BVD will have the funding to launch a campaign to educate the public about the harmful effects of littering. Kharod says the BVD also is applying for a grant that would enable them to hire an expert to mark out paddle trails along the river and create a map for recreational use.

“Money is there, and we are applying for it. And we will be applying for it,” says Kharod. Kharod, who has a background in fund-raising, says he does not see money as a limiting factor. He says he would like to do more community outreach and get other organizations involved in some of the BVD’s projects. “We can work together on a project that we can all take credit for, and we could make it better,” he says.

Some of the BVD’s most recent projects, such as boat landings, promote the recreational use of the river. Kharod says the BVD is currently planning a project with The Nature Station to build a boat dock there. In addition, the BVD also has 12 new canoes, housed at the BVD office that are open for public use. Kharod says the BVD team is offering to take student groups out on the river in the canoes. “We’re trying to create some paddle trails, marked so that people who want to go canoeing won’t feel scared to,” says Kharod.

One of the BVD’s missions is to increase recreational activities on the river. BVD Executive Director Kerry Collins says the community needs to change its perceptions of the river. “The river is not as bad as people think it is it is, and it’s not as polluted as people believe it to be,” says Collins. “It does have some problems, but the problems are very solvable.

“People always talk about the fish — that they would never eat the fish from the Vermilion River,” says Collins. “Well, there’s nothing wrong with the fish. It’s no different than fish from the Atchafalaya Basin.”  According to Collins, the BVD’s next hurdle is overcoming the amounts of fecal coliform bacteria dumped into the river. It is the high bacteria counts that prevent the river from being safe for swimming. Collins says reducing the amount of bacteria is the BVD’s biggest challenge.

“It will take forcing individuals who don’t have the proper type of sewer systems and septic tanks to maintain their system,” says Collins. “They won’t do it unless they're forced to. We’ve tried pleading and educating them. All that's left is forcing them to do it.”

Kharod says farmers who let their cows graze near the river also increase the amount of fecal coliform bacteria. The BVD has asked farmers to put up fences to prevent the cattle from defecating in the river. “Bayou Vermilion District has received federal money to pay the farmers to get it done for free, but there are a lot of farmers who don’t want to do that because they lose some of their land,” says Kharod.  Kharod says he would like people to understand that their everyday actions affect the watershed.

“Right now, the watershed is not as healthy as it can be. And we can show you how you can change what you do to make it healthier,” says Kharod.

Marie Elizabeth de Mahy is a senior journalism student at the University of Louisiana. To comment on this article, e-mail timesedit@timesofacadiana.com. Want to share with a friend? E-mail it from our Web site, www.times-ofacadiana.com.

Letter to the Editor -- 02/09/04
Support the BVD
I just read Elizabeth de Mahy's story on the Bayou Vermilion District (From Trash to Treasure, Feb. 2). I really enjoyed the fact that you are highlighting this very serious problem. It is the news media’s responsibility as well as ours to support change that will benefit our environment. The river belongs to everyone in this area, and it is sad to see it get such a bad reputation. I am looking forward to the community awareness campaign to address the challenges facing the BVD. Great job.

Maria G. Garcia -- Lafayette