 |
| Whose waters? Whose crawfish? Crawfisherman Jody Meche plies the waters of Louisiana's Atchafalaya Basin, which he's fished for decades. Mary Know Merrill - staff  Dispute in crawfish country |
In bayou, whose water is it?
A legal battle brews over whether fishermen are trespassing when they fish in the flooded bottomlands.
from the July 23, 2007 edition
Page 2 of 3
Origin of landowners' complaints
Landowners trace their complaints to the 1930 flood control locks put in by the US Army Corps of Engineers to control the Atchafalaya River. These flood locks decreased the value of their properties because they increased the duration of annual floods. At the same time, the locks created a crawfish paradise, the catch from which helped create international demand for a succulent crustacean used in everything from gumbos to étouffées.
| Dispute in crawfish country |
After watching crawfishing operations grow larger and more sophisticated, landowners in 1989 banded together to promote better management and take a share of the profits. An attempt in 1991 to lease the bottomlands to crawfishermen failed. Since then, powerful county sheriffs and land-use lawyers have supported the landowners.
"Even if you do have the right to use the state-owned water bottom for commerce, it doesn't include the right to come miles onto my property when it's flooded, ... harvest thousands of dollars of crawfish each year, and leave me the empty bait boxes," says Rudy Sparks, vice president of lands and timber at Williams Inc., in Patterson, La., the major landowner in the area.
But it's a case outside the Atchafalaya, in the Mississippi drainage area of East Carroll Parish, that is now the focus, drawing recreational fishermen into the crawfish alliance. It began when two bass fishermen were arrested in 2001 for trespassing on private property as they were casting lures in 20 feet of water. Last year, presiding US District Court Judge Robert James ruled that boaters can breach flooded private banks to travel, but not to fish.
What many Americans – and some judges – don't understand, is the peculiar hydrology of many of the country's most fecund backwaters, says Paul Hurd, a lawyer in Monroe, La., who will make the fishermen's case to the US Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals on Sept. 3.
RSS feed
