• Title: Trash In the Bayou
• Category:KATC
• Date: July 16, 2014

The Bayou is one of the beautiful natural wonders of South Louisiana. The pollution that flows into the waters because of flooding causes the beauty of the Bayou to fade.

When heavy rain hits Lafayette, the water flushes the city’s streets. This causes cups, bottles, candy wrappers and other trash carelessly tossed on the ground to flow into the Bayou. The litter goes into a storm drain, flows down into a coulee and eventually washes into Bayou Vermilion.

The Bayou Vermilion District has, for years, maintained booms stretched across major coulees in attempts to capture a portion of the garbage. Keeping the booms cleaned out is a labor chore, as workers pull out the captured trash by hand.

Good news though, Lafayette City-Parish Council signed off on a joint project with the Bayou Vermilion District to buy a $150,000 piece of equipment designed to funnel the floating trash into a large metal cage, which can then be lifted and emptied into a dump truck and taken to the proper area for disposal.

“It just makes our job a lot easier because it allows us to pick up a lot of trash at one time instead of a lot of trash piece by piece,” said David Cheramie, Bayou Vermilion District CEO, “it’ll allow us to start working on other projects we have planned for the Bayou.”

The Bandalong Litter Trap, was developed by an Australian company and is used by a few other U.S. cities that have waterway trash problems similar to Lafayette’s. It will be installed along a branch of Coulee Mine just north of South College Road.

Overall, the amount of trash Lafayette sends to the bayou is substantial.

Bayou Vermilion District workers last year filled 1,140 55-gallon barrels with litter. That is 62,700 total gallons of trash. In comparison you could fill a thirteen gallon trash can in your kitchen 4,283 times. Along with that trash they pulled out 175 tires and 750 appliances, according to the Bayou Vermillion District.

Bayou Virmillion District will keep cleaning out the trash booms in other main coulees by hand, this coulee will be the first of hopefully many that lighten the load for workers.

This is only a small solution to a bigger problem though. As there is still going to be trash going into the coulees Cheramie told KATC that he urges people to properly dispose of waste and recyclables instead of using the Bayou as your trash can.