Originally a lake in St. Mary Parish, Louisiana, Wax Lake was turned in the early 1940s into the Wax Lake Outlet, an artificial channel built by the United States Army Corps of Engineers for flood control in the lower Atchafalaya Basin and around Morgan City. Designed to divert 30 percent of the Atchafalaya River’s flow, the project cut about 15 miles of outlet from Six Mile Lake. Its most notable consequence was the rapid creation of the Wax Lake Delta through sediment deposition. By 2005 the former lake had filled with sediment, the delta had pushed about 5 miles seaward, and the site had become an important model for understanding delta formation and coastal restoration in Louisiana.

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