Pour l’amour de Terrebonne! Cleaning up Terrebonne Parish

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Locals are frustrated with trash and litter in Terrebonne Parish. According to some concerned citizens, litter has always been an issue, but how can the community as a whole come together to create a cleaner Terrebonne?


 

Houma Natives Rhett Lecompte and Joe Boudreaux have taken it upon themselves to raise awareness on Facebook recently and take matters into their own hands. Boudreaux filmed himself at the busy intersection of Martin Luther King Blvd. and West Park Avenue where he reported what he saw,” they just recently cut the grass after like a whole year and didn’t pick up the trash.” He said they basically ran over the trash and it’s still there, so he grabbed trash bags, gloves, and picked up the trash himself. He dubbed it “One Bag for the Bayou” and nominated three friends to do the same thing, to “clean this place up.” He then showed drainage covered with trash and debris where it was evident water could not drain properly. In the next video, the drainage was free of trash, and he said,” it literally took 15 seconds.” He also noticed that there was a huge piece of debris wedged between the banks of the bayou in Gray.

 

Boudreaux is a local business owner who is concerned about the state of the parish not only for his family but his future family generations. He told the Times that going into other parishes, it’s inviting, and just looks clean, but Terrebonne Parish is the latter. He’s not talking about debris from Hurricane Ida that still hugs the curbs of the streets, but the obvious littering that is happening in the area and the fact no one in local leadership is doing anything about it. Boudreaux said although he appreciates the focus on floodgates, pumps, locks, and levees, however, he asked, “what about the drainage inside the parish? Who’s going to want to live here if we don’t care about the quality of life?” The passion was evident in his voice as he shared that he already talked to local officials about it to be told they’re going to do something about it. He proudly boasted, “Pour l’amour de Terrebonne!” or, “For the Love of Terrebonne!”

 

Another community member to share the frustration is Hank Babin where he accepted Boudreaux’s challenge. He said in a video on social media that the amount of trash along the banks and in the bayous are getting caught up stopping up the water flow. “It boggles my mind that the parish doesn’t come out and do something about it,” he said. Babin videoed the area he picked up “one bag for the bayou” on the intersection of Savanne Rd. and Hwy. 311. In the video, you can see not only trash strewn across the area but also the water started flowing once again once he picked up one single bag of trash. He also picked up a piece of metal blocking the drainage culvert and what appeared to be a 5-10-year-old cover for a street light. “Thank you, Rhett Lecompte and Joe Boudreaux, for inspiring this challenge,” he said, “Y’all go do more, one bag for the bayou.”


 

The momentum is snowballing to not only friends, but business leaders, and community stakeholders alike. Just over this past weekend, the challenge morphed into a bucket challenge where people, including families and children, went out to make the parish a little cleaner. So, what’s going on and who is accountable? Clay Naquin is the Director of Terrebonne Parish Solid and Waste Department and he told the Times that his department is accountable and the accountability measures are in place. He said he is very open with the protocols and procedures his department takes on when it comes to littering.

 

Naquin said it’s been a main priority for the department to take care of the littering issue in Terrebonne Parish for years. They have projects and protocols that are in place and he explained that it’s more of a people issue than it is a government issue. What does he mean by that? He described situations where they would clean up main areas only for the same areas to get littered pretty much the next day. 

 

He does have a staff that was finally filled at the beginning of December after almost a year of being vacant. The staff includes two teams of two people that pick up litter on ATVs. They are assigned litter ‘hot spots’ they regularly pick up. The hot spots include areas such as fishing spots, Martin Luther King Boulevard (picked up weekly and sometimes every 10 days), Audubon and Percy Brown, St. Louis Canal, Bayou Canal, Hollywood Road, and many other high-traffic areas that Naquin said are under assignment for pick-up. The department also has an agreement with the Terrebonne’s Parish Sheriff’s Office for $150,000 where trustees would pick up trash around the Parish, mostly the long roads and the parish main roads. The program provided two vans, both with eight trustees. The program has stopped since COVID and hasn’t resumed due to the lack of trustees. He shared they have a great relationship with the sheriff’s office and things were starting to get closer to normal with the number of trustees, but Hurricane Ida passed and damaged the jail, so they were set back once again. This led him to mention a comment on social media about using the prisoners in jail to go pick up the trash, but because of safety reasons, he said that’s simply not a safe option. “There’s a difference between prisoners and trustees,” he said.


 

Naquin mentioned they started a few projects such as providing orange 9-gallon garbage cans that have been placed at popular fishing spots and other areas such as Parish-maintained parks that are safe for patrons to use. They also have trash cans downtown Houma that are picked up twice a week. He said when he took over vegetation,  they signed in a Boulevard Cutting Contract that said the crews have to clean the litter up every time they cut. He then shared that when the job is first done, it looks great, however, it quickly fills up with litter shortly after the job is done. “Our contractors are picking up the litter,” he said,” we have done a lot of stuff to stop the litter,” he said. He also mentioned another Facebook post that mentioned the parish workers are not working, however, the accountability is present because of technology and procedures they have in place such as truck dash-cams, a dispatching system, and a GPS system. He noted these aren’t in place to be “big brother” but rather to hold accountability.

 

He shared that Hurricane Ida brought some difficulties as well. Illegal dumping has taken a substantial increase, especially in the darker areas, and he said debris on side of the road sometimes gets caught up in wind adding to the littering problem. He said as far as the illegal dumping, it’s simply because people don’t either realize where to go, or they don’t have the time or money to properly deliver debris to the facility. They are installing cameras and looking at options to hopefully increase the chance of catching the people dumping illegally and are always looking for recommendations to further the cause.

 

As far as the bag and bucket challenges, Naquin said he’s more than okay with it and always encourages citizens to do their part,” I don’t have a problem of them challenging each other, I think it’s a great thing to do,” he said. He’s hoping the recent awareness of the littering problem will make more people aware of the issue and take steps to help out. “It’s not the parish employees or the government going out and throwing the stuff out on the road, we’re out there trying to clean up the roads, and it’s the general public,” he said, “It’s not everybody, but it only takes a small amount.”


 

There are several projects that he said the department is doing to try to alleviate the litter problem. He said Parish President Dove has never told him no when it comes to a new idea, “When we have an idea, we put it to work,” he said. He wants the public to know they’re transparent in the department about the efforts and citizens are more than welcome to contact him to talk, 985-873-6729, or even go by to see the way they do things. Naquin also said they are always looking for new ideas and innovative ways to continue to battle the ever-going litter issue. 

 

Here are some photos from across the social media world from people across the parish taking the litter issues into their own hands #1BagForTheBayou