The Vermilion River: Most Polluted, Then Reclaimed
Near Lafayette, Louisiana
The Vermilion River begins on the boundary of Lafayette and St. Martin parishes and flows seventy miles south through the city and into Vermilion Bay, which opens to the Gulf of Mexico. It was the reason people settled here. The only point in early Lafayette where water transportation could be secured was at the site of the Pinhook Bridge.
The railroad arrived, and then the highways, and the river lost its role as the primary artery of commerce. The Army Corps of Engineers dredged it in nineteen forty-four to a depth of nine feet and a bottom width of one hundred feet. The bayou became an industrial and agricultural drain. By the nineteen seventies, the Vermilion was widely considered the most polluted river in the United States.
That title prompted action. Improvements to sewage treatment facilities, changes in industrial discharge, and sustained attention to water quality over subsequent decades transformed the river's condition. The Vermilion is now a recreational corridor. A paddle trail runs its length. People kayak and fish where industrial effluent once dominated.
The arc of the Vermilion, transportation route, then sewer, then restored waterway, mirrors the arc of a great many American rivers in the industrial and post-industrial era. What makes it notable here is that the recovery happened in a city of moderate size, through municipal will and federal regulation, without the resources of a major metropolitan area. The river that named the city came back.
