A newly created state legislative panel focused on the Atchafalaya Basin is tackling a bedeviling problem: how to reverse the declining health of an economic and cultural touchstone for Louisiana.
The two main problems the joint committee will tackle, members said Friday, are the sedimentation believed to be slowly filling many parts of the basin and the volume and quality of water entering the swamp.
Larger than the Florida Everglades, the nearly one-million-acre basin is the largest river swamp and contiguous hardwood bottomland forest in the nation. The forested backyard for many in south Louisiana, the basin stretches from near Simmesport to the Gulf 140 miles to the south, according to the basin’s National Heritage Area agency.
Crisscrossed by pipelines and elevated highways, pocketed by oil and gas wells, leveed…
