Steve Picou's Writings & Observations

Published Works
(Ok so the plural is an overstatement, but there'll be more!)

This essay was published as a guest editorial in the Times of Acadiana in the Spring of 1994. Editor Richard Baudoin appreciated the perspective of the piece and agreed to run it. Richard died in late February 2000 at the age of 46. His funeral was attended by a broad cross section of Louisiana's leadership including politicians, artists, musicians, writers and more. He was a much loved man whose work always reflected his beliefs. Even those who disagreed with him found him respectable and honest. He will be missed. The Last Coulee

A slew of trees were recently sacrificed near the Cajundome, Eraste Landry at Bertrand, and off East Bayou Parkway to create yet another civilized imitation of nature --a concrete coulee. Diligent Lafayette planners, administrators, politicians, engineers and contractors spent a chunk of taxpayers' money to polish the image of urban efficiency in the names of progress and run-off. As usual with such projects, the constituency left voiceless and unrepresented -- the natural inhabitants of the Vermilion River system --pays the ultimate price.

The destruction of these trees makes no sense to me, especially considering the amazing job done on a similar project along Mount Vernon Drive about ten years ago. The trees there were spared by concerned neighbors, engineers, and arborists. At the time I thought that a precedent had been established and would be followed. That the City of Lafayette had come to appreciate its natural legacy, that the administrators of public projects had realized the importance of maintaining the city's image and natural beauty.

I thought wrong.

For the past thirty or so years, in the name of progress, the many moss-draped small bayous that characterize our land have systematically been replaced by the neat, clean lines of sun-drenched hurricane fence restricting a gray thread of concrete. It's a matter of control--of run-off, of erosion, of Nature.

But does this control equal progress?

Traditionally, civil engineering reacts more to Nature's impact on human activities than to human activities' impact on Nature. Hence we speed the oily, trash-filled effluent of a busy, rain-flushed highway--unfiltered by grass, roots or soil--into our vital river systems. Nature gives us rain, we move it along. It's all part of the adversarial relationship that society seems to have with Nature, especially in Louisiana where if you stand still long enough, something grows over or on you. But it's much more complicated than that.

You have, no doubt, witnessed the struggle of the salmon on its epic journey to spawn, leaving the vastness of the ocean to thread a path up a progressively smaller and increasingly dangerous stream. On television we've seen the beautiful fish, the clear, gurgling waters, views of spawning that any Louisiana native would consider rare along the Gulf. Here, thanks to our agricultural and building practices, we have muddy gullies, muddy bayous, muddy rivers and lakes. Hidden from view, the life cycles of our waterways remain a mystery to most residents. Folks generally just catch 'em, clean 'em, and occasionally note the number of eggs in one freshly gutted.

What I'm getting at is that it's more than just the loss of trees. In nature, it is the lingering of water that provides a stable environment for much of life. By lining the streams and speeding the water along, we interrupt microscopic food production, causing a ripple effect throughout the entire cycle of life. And when we radically alter a gully or stream, the entire system is adversely affected. Not only do species lose habitat, but the water is sped along, increasing pressure on the capacities of areas downstream, and causing flooding that often wouldn't have normally occurred had the water percolated into the banks of natural gullies and taken longer to thread its way to the sea.

In the coulee near East Bayou Parkway, I observed hundreds of minnows swimming just mere inches above the point where the concreted coulee began. Several small frogs, and one tiny snake hurriedly slipped from view into the dark water. In contrast, the water in the concreted section was devoid of visible life. Nearby, and just a few yards from an ominous, silent bulldozer, a majestic hardwood, easily over a hundred years old, stood in harm's way--awaiting execution in the next issuance of taxpayer subsidy by unenlightened community administrators.

I once lived on Halcott Street in Lafayette, four blocks from a natural coulee that was being "improved." A small alligator snapping turtle wandered into my yard, escaping the dragline and bulldozer. I put the turtle in the river, wished it luck, and wondered how many other creatures had been forced out, not to get such a second chance.

Ironically, as we have carefully concreted its tributaries, public money tries to infuse life back into the Vermilion River with costly fresh water diversion. But as the drainage ditch for thousands of cars, people, animals and acres--does life in the river have a chance? Imagine this: even if all the run-off were controlled, if not another piece of trash found its way into that waterway, the species that populate the river would still have to somehow suddenly evolve, and find new ways to reproduce--in the concrete coulees or in the galvanized metal tubes beneath the streets.

Today Lafayette is about down to the last natural coulee, and the machinery to coat it with life-starving concrete is moving inexorably forward. All to complete what engineers and planners see as the necessary processes of a civilized city. Yet it seems we lack the collective ability to see the big picture, one that comes into focus if you think of the rivers and streams of the world as blood vessels in a system. In this system, we cement-loving humans are systematically hardening the capillaries, veins, and arteries of our surroundings in the name of progress. And the circulatory system of the planet is dying of congestive human failure.

As Louisiana's land and water ecosystems struggle to cope with both manmade and natural disasters, we must educate ourselves about the ways in which we affect the processes of life. For every drop we spill of petrochemical product, every piece of paper and plastic, and every cigarette butt washed into a rapidly flowing concrete ditch eventually becomes part of our water systems. And if we keep coating the biosphere's channels of life with concrete and steel in an ever more vain attempt to expedite accumulated rainfall, then we humans will likely become the run-off that the planet hastens to extinction.

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