Swim meet results – Week 5
October 3, 2017
Walterine Foret
October 4, 2017
Drivers on Abby Road are treated to Thibodaux’s picturesque qualities of the present and the promise of more to come.
Beautiful single-family homes with sprawling, pampered lawns line both sides of the street as one heads northward from La. Highway 308. There is the occasional pause for the past, such as a sugar cane field on the east side of the road, and the future, where houses-in-progress pop up next to open lots waiting for development.
However, the northwest corner of the Abby Road and Lake Howard Ave. intersection reveals one of the scars running along the present’s face. A drainage ditch runs east to west in between Lake Howard and Deanna Lafont’s home. The ditch is riddled with vegetation and water sitting idle in the culverts on both sides. Lafont said the ditch has progressively widened, eroding her lot and turning more of her lush, green lawn into decrepit, muddy sludge. The ditch has also become a dumping ground, according to Lafont, who said her family has had to pick out trash, basketballs and even bikes out of it.
The ditch is the site of a would-be Lafourche Parish project, one that Council Member Jerry Jones said is stalled because of his contentious relationship with Parish President Jimmy Cantrelle. Cantrelle said the ditch has not been addressed because of the parish’s other pressing priorities.
The project in the ditch is the final part of a drainage project for the Abby Lakes subdivision, the entrance of which is on Lake Howard. The project installed culverts from the subdivision running west toward Abby Road, where the parish replaced small ditches with larger, connected culverts along the east side of Abby. The parish then covered those culverts, making them part of a closed drainage system.
The project on the Lake Howard ditch does the same, connecting about 160 ft. between the culverts and covering them to close the drainage system entirely. Jones said the ditch on Lafont’s property should have been included in the original project budget but was overlooked. The parish has $202,000 in this year’s budget allocated to finish it, which Jones said is more than enough to pay for the costs. He said all Cantrelle has to do to move it forward is put it out to bid, but work has not begun. Jones said by delaying the last piece, the rest of the drainage is being compromised. The vegetation and the silting of the culverts hamstrings the drainage capabilities in Abby Lakes while the water erodes more land on both sides of Lafont’s property encompassing the ditch.
“The money we spent doing the main part of it, by not doing that, we’re just defeating the purpose,” Jones said.
Nick Fanguy, president of the Abby Lakes Homeowners Association, said the major portion of the drainage project has helped his neighborhood. He said flooding has been reduced since Lafourche completed the first part. However, both Fanguy and Lafont have said flooding is still an issue in the area. In late August, when outside bands of the remnants of Hurricane Harvey traversed the Bayou Region, the entrance to Abby Lakes flooded, with waters too high for any low-lying cars to enter. Lafont said water rose to the concrete slab on her lot during those rains. Fanguy said while he is grateful for the work done so far, he heard from Jones at the beginning of the year that the work would be done by March.
“I’m glad that the parish has done most of the project,” Fanguy said. “Now it’s time to just finish it.”
At last week’s council meeting, Jones put up a resolution requesting parish administration work on the project, which the council approved. However, the resolution is ultimately toothless, and is only a request; the power lies with Cantrelle in moving the project forward. Jones alleged that the parish president is stalling on the work because of his combative relationship with Cantrelle, one that has resulted in frequent dustups, insults and allegations of misconduct at almost every council meeting.
“He’s been dragging it out because we haven’t been getting along,” Jones said. “He’s taking it out on the districts.”
Cantrelle said the delay was not a matter of backbiting via projects but a product of priorities. He said he has recently been focused on drafting the parish’s 2018 budget, which has taken more than a month to work through as the parish deals with declining revenues amid the oil and gas downturn. He said he will soon pivot most of his attention toward the parish’s employee health insurance plan for next year.
Cantrelle said a third priority has been addressing the false allegations lobbied at him by council members. At most council meetings, members have asked pointed and challenging questions to Cantrelle, with some discussion implying incompetence or impropriety on his behalf. Cantrelle said much of his staff’s time has been dedicated to researching and defending himself from those allegations.
“Right now, we just don’t have time to work on anything but defending myself, the budget, and insurance,” Cantrelle said.
Cantrelle said the parish’s projects are prioritized by necessity and timeliness. He said projects that immediately neutralize the threat of houses flooding are tackled first, while others are handled on a first-come, first-serve basis. He said he knows every project is important to someone, but he has to address the most pressing issues first while dealing with others that come in, such as flooding in other areas when those Harvey bands hit Lafourche. The parish president did not provide a time table for when the Abby Lakes drainage project would be completed.
“There’s nobody that’s being hurt right now with the project not being completed. There’s no homes in threat of being flooded, it’s all been dug out, it’s just a matter of adding a few more culverts to finish it up,” Cantrelle said. “There’s nobody in jeopardy of house flooding or anything like that. But we had other people’s houses in jeopardy when these storms came, and we had to address that.”
For Lafont and the Abby Lakes neighborhood, the wait goes on. While Lafont is not technically a member of the subdivision, she has maintained close contact with Fanguy and the homeowners’ group, as their fates are connected on the drainage project. She and her family moved into their home four years ago, when the parish was working on the original, larger aspect of drainage in the area. While the excavators, trucks and culverts were a sore to both eyes and ears then, it seems absence has made the heart grow fonder.
“I miss all the construction equipment. I’m ready for it to be back,” Lafont said.
