The Atchafalaya

Louisiana’s Atchafalaya River runs 140 miles from the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico, hosting the largest river swamp system in North America, the most important floodway on the continent, and one of the most commercially-important wetlands in the world. For the greater part of this century, the Atchafalaya’s destiny has been in the hands of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, a circumstance which has not proved to be fortunate for much of America’s wetlands, particularly in this part of the country.