Basin pact signed

• By JASON BROWN
• Advocate Acadiana bureau
• Published: May 16, 2009 - Page: 1BA

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BUTTE LA ROSE — The Louisiana Department of Natural Resources and The Nature Conservancy memorialized a partnership that will allow the two agencies to share resources while working on restoration efforts in the Atchafalaya Basin.

The memorandum of understanding was officially signed at the Atchafalaya Welcome Center in Butte La Rose on Friday.

Louis E. Buatt, DNR’s assistant secretary of the Office of Coastal Restoration and Management, said the pact will help reverse the basin’s continued decline.

Increased sedimentation and declining water quality and hydrology has caused the basin’s ecology to deteriorate, Buatt said.

Much of that decline is attributable to work in the basin to make the area a floodplain to protect the country and region.

Those activities have caused problems with the natural flow and hydrology of the area, said Stephen Chustz, acting director of DNA’s Atchafalaya Basin Program.

“So what we’re looking to do as part of our new annual plan process is restore the water quality, restore the habitat and improve the quality of the basin,” Chustz said.

This partnership will assist in those endeavors by allowing the agencies to leverage resources, share data and work alongside each other, Buatt said.

The basin is the nation’s largest river flood plain swamp, complete with a variety of different habitat that affords unprecedented recreational opportunities, said Keith Ouchley, executive director of the Louisiana Chapter of The Nature Conservancy.

Both agencies have been working separately in the basin for some time.

The Legislature created the Atchafalaya Basin Program in 1996 and developed a master plan in 1999. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has been working in the area since 1985.

In 2008, the state passed new legislation to accelerate restoration efforts.

The partnership allows the two agencies to share any data that has been collected, thereby eliminating the need to “reinvent the wheel on some of that,” Ouchley said. “It just makes sense to put them both together.”