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The Terrebonne Parish Council met last night and discussions included cleaning and dredging Bayou Terrebonne and other waterways.
Council member Carl Harding requested to speak about dredging and debris removal in Bayou Terrebonne along with other canals and bayous within the parish. Terrebonne Parish resident Anthony Rainey addressed the council about drainage issues due to the conditions of Bayou
Gray Resident Anthony Rainey
Terrebonne. Rainey lives in Gray and voiced that the residents have had problems since Hurricane Ida with bayous being filled with debris, “They also need to be dredged,” he said. He voiced that when heavy rains happen, water is not going into the bayou in between the U.P.S. and 316 by the Lucky Mart because of debris including trees.
Terrebonne Parish Manager Mike Toups said that the council approved on July 27 the administration’s recommendation to hire All South Consulting Engineers to handle the cleanup project. Toups shared that they had since had a meeting with All South and identified they have roughly 15 miles of waterway from Schriever to the Intracoastal that needs to be cleaned. “We did receive a grant from the United States Department of Agriculture, Natural Resources Conservation Services in the amount of $1.6 million to fund this project,” Toups said. He said it is a 90-10 match so they have roughly $1.45 million from the federal government which means they will have to come up with around $145,000.
Toups went on to say they have around 50 bridges between the northern part of Bayou Terrebonne and the Intracoastal, “What that means is that we have to negotiate right of access between each one of these bridges with individual property owners to get the equipment from the land onto the bayou to get all the trees cut, cleaned, removed, put on the barges, and then put back onto the bank, put on dump trucks, and hauled off,” Toups explained. He explained it is a time-consuming process and they have begun talking to the property owners to gain access, “How long that takes? We have no idea, but they are working diligently,” Toups said. He estimates that it will take four to six months before they can go to bid for the project. Councilman Dr. John Navy raised the concern that it won’t get done for hurricane season which Toups answered with the explanation that it is a process.
Councilman John Amedee chimed in asking about dredging of the waterways. He shared there are plans for dredging from the Intracoastal to the Thibodaux line. This project is separate from the cleanup project and is being designed by GIS. Toups shared that the project calls to dredge the Bayou Terrebonne to a minus six foot, “The issue with that is there are a lot of old wooden bulkheads and we have to be very careful what we dredge because we are no doubt going to end up buying some bulkheads as we dredge,” Toups said.
Gray resident Rainey shared that he would like to encourage residents in those areas to attend a meeting that runs on the third Wednesday of every month at Mount Olive Baptist Church, 3076 West Main in Gray, so they can explain to the citizens what the project means to the community and how their involvement makes it possible. He will be working with councilman Harding to arrange details for a town hall meeting.
