Cocodrie, a tiny town “down the bayou” in south Louisiana, holds a special place in my heart. Reflections from the Road 2.8.2016
It’s hard to explain how special this place is without seeing it firsthand. Even though Cocodrie was slightly out of the way on our drive from New Orleans to Dallas, I convinced Chris to make a stop here. The degree of environmental degradation, flooding, and land loss over the past 100 years in south Louisiana is staggering. Yet the landscape is still hauntingly beautiful, and the culture and community of the bayou is like nowhere I have ever been before. Â
We stopped at my favorite grocery/hardware/antique/anything-you-could-ever-want store in Cocodrie, and listened to one of the owners tell us about the beautiful trees that used to line the bayou back behind the store. Now because of saltwater intrusion and land subsidence many of these trees have died over the past 20 years, and in another 20 years there may be no more trees out behind the store.
Cocodrie is mostly made up of fishing camps built up on stilts to avoid the ever rising water levels in south Louisiana, and LUMCON (the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium). LUMCON is a marine lab utilized by Louisiana universities, colleges, and K-12 schools, and looks like a concrete airport control center. While completing my graduate studies at Duke University, I moved to Cocodrie for a summer internship position that involved researching community resilience in south Louisiana coastal communities.Â
When I first arrived in south Louisiana, I wondered why don’t the people here just move? The water is literally lapping at their front doors. Some homes in south Louisiana are now only accessible by boat due to rising water levels. Check out the immense challenges here and here of maintaining Louisiana Highway 1, the two lane highway that leads to Port Fourchon.
So why do people stay in south Louisiana? While I lived in Cocodrie, I learned that one reason is because there is such an incredible “sense of place” for the people that have lived here for generations. They can’t imagine leaving their homes, families, and a unique way of life so ingrained in their culture for generations. It is a gritty way of life, with a sense of hope and resilience pervading everyday life on the bayou, despite such an uncertain future.
And as you drive across the country, you realize that the United States is a network of these small towns, and it’s important to fight for their survival. Whether it’s the small town of Beaufort, NC, Selma, AL, Cocodrie, LA, Ozona, TX or Marfa, TX that you happen to find yourself in along the way. Â
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Geography and water is vital to understanding the plight of Cocodrie and other communities in south Louisiana. The Mississippi River snakes through South Louisiana, and is now heavily guarded on both sides by man-made levees, which were built after the horribly destructive flood of 1927. This levee system protected land and homes by preventing flooding. And so the great power of the mighty Mississippi River had been harnessed.
And yet…
The sediment that is carried by the waters of the Mississippi used to flow in all directions into the countryside for thousands of years, re-sedimenting the land and counteracting the natural process of land subsidence in south Louisiana. Now the water and sediments of the Mississippi are ushered straight down into the Gulf of Mexico by the highly effective levee system. Also, many of the upstream dams reduce the amount of sediment flowing downstream. Add in erosion caused by storms that frequently hit the Louisiana coast, erosion from the canals built by the oil and gas companies, and sea level rise. The sum total is that south Louisiana is literally washing away.
For more info about the precipitous rate of land loss occurring in south Louisiana, take a look at some of the blogs I wrote while living in Cocodrie: http://blogs.nicholas.duke.edu/internshipblogs/louisiana/
Also, a fascinating read about the environmental challenges faced by Louisiana is “Bayou Farewell” by Mike Tidwell. Â
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