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Wax Lake Outlet

The Corps constructed this outlet to convey floodwaters from the Atchafalaya Basin. The outlet, with an initial design capacity of 300,000 cubic feet per second, provides an additional means of safely passing flood waters to the Gulf of Mexico. The dredged channel is about 10 miles west of Berwick and extends from Sixmile Lake through the Teche Ridge and Wax Lake into Atchafalaya Bay, a distance of about 15.7 miles.

The channel was initially constructed to a bottom width of 300 feet from Sixmile Lake to a point onehalf mile below Bayou Teche, 400 feet below that point, and a uniform depth of 45 feet NGVD. The excavated material from the channel dredging was used to construct guide levees extending from the WABPL to the Intracoastal Waterway on each side of the outlet.

The Wax Lake Outlet Control Structure was constructed in 1987 to stabilize the distribution of low to normal floodway outlet flows to approximately 70 percent/30 percent between the Lower Atchafalaya River and the Wax Lake Outlet and to increase the channel development of the Lower Atchafalaya River, thereby increasing the combined capacity of the Lower Atchafalaya River and the Wax Lake Outlet to convey flood flows. Flooding of riverfront businesses along the Lower Atchafalaya River in Morgan City/Berwick Louisiana occurred more frequently after the completion of the Wax Lake Outlet Control Structure. Local interests claimed that the control structure was primarily responsible for the more frequent flooding and requested a complete removal of the weir and dredging of the channel above the weir. The President of the Mississippi River Commission directed the removal of the weir, as requested. The weir removal was completed in March 1995 and the dredging of Sixmile Lake was completed in June 1995.

Rock from the Wax Lake Outlet Control Structure was used to protect the shorelines along Freshwater Bayou in Vermilion Parish and along the Avoca Island levee at Bayou Shaffer in St. Mary Parish. The Wax Lake Outlet rock was also used to fill a scour hole in the Charenton Drainage Canal at Bayou Teche in St. Mary Parish and to build segmented breakwaters on the north side of Grand Isle in Jefferson Parish to slow wetland erosion.

The East and West Calumet floodgates, described below were constructed where the guide levees cross Bayou Teche to allow continued navigation. New bridges were constructed to carry U.S. Highway 90 and the Southern Pacific lines over the dredged channel. This improvement was completed in 1942 at a cost of $7,122,000, and is maintained by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, except for the bridges, which are maintained by their owners.

East and West Calumet Floodgates at Wax Lake Outlet

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