THE PUSH FOR DRAINAGE

Dustin Martinez has loads of pictures and videos to show anyone who asks.

Martinez has been documenting the flooding on Bayou Gardens Blvd. near Southland Mall in Houma for more than two years to illustrate a persistent flooding problem. According to him, every time there is a moderate to heavy rain event, the north side of the four-lane boulevard is inundated with water. He has photos of cars driving through the flooded road, with water reaching above the vehicles’ wheels. One day he saw people resort to pushing a car that was stuck in the pool on Bayou Gardens.

For Martinez, the flooding is a matter of his ability to make it back to his home. He, his wife and infant live in a new subdivision branching off the north side of Bayou Gardens. He grew up on the other side of town, but he moved there with his new family because of the subdivision’s high elevation. Whenever a strong rain hits Houma, Martinez knows when he returns from work he will have to go through the mall parking lot, take Alma St. to get into the shopping center parking lot that runs alongside the north side of Bayou Gardens and enter into his subdivision from that lot. As a Houma native, he had an idea of the flooding near the mall, but it was not until he moved there did he realize the scope of the issue

“I knew about this. I knew they had a water issue in the Bayou Gardens [Blvd.]. I didn’t know the severity of it until I had to drive it every day. This is just getting silly,” Martinez said.

Martinez said he had been talking to Terrebonne Parish Consolidated Government officials since the previous parish administration and council before he addressed the council about the issue at a meeting last month. Local developer Henry Richard, who developed Martinez’s subdivision, also spoke on the flooding at the meeting. Both said the parish has known about the problem for years but has yet to fix it. Martinez said he loves where he lives, but he wants Terrebonne officials to provide both short and long-term solutions for the Bayou Gardens drainage issues.

“It’s not just that if affects me,” Martinez said. “They talk about the parish, the number one issue for the parish should be the safety of its citizens. I don’t know how you can get much more of a safety issue when people are getting stranded and they have damaging water.”

Terrebonne Public Works Director Mike Toups said he currently has surveyors getting elevations of Bayou Gardens to devise a plan. According to Toups, the cause for the flooding on Bayou Gardens is the difference in elevation between the two sides of the boulevard. He estimated the northern lane, which was the original road before the mall was built, is about 15-18 inches lower than the southern lane closer to the mall. The north lane also has a dip in it running about 600 feet. While Bayou Gardens normally gravity drains into Bayou Terrebonne, when the bayou’s water gets too high, the water will back up toward the boulevard. The parish has a sluice gate to prevent additional water from getting to Bayou Gardens, with a pipe to bring water toward St. Louis Canal, but Toups said the parish does not want to inundate that drainage system.

“We try to control it because we don’t want to put too much water and risk flooding people’s homes that live between the mall and St. Louis Canal. We’d rather have the street flooding than have the homes flooding,” Toups said.

Toups agreed with Martinez that the flooding is both a drainage and safety problem, and he is in the process of figuring out how to add catch basins on Bayou Gardens as a short-

term solution. According to Toups, elevating the 600 feet on the northern side, as well as the turning lanes and catch basins on the side of the road, would cost roughly $1 million and be about a year-long project. He said the long-term fix would be to add a pump station to the end of Bayou Terrebonne near Terrebonne General Medical Center to pump into the Intracoastal Waterway, which would keep the bayou’s level low near Bayou Gardens and stop water from backing up. However, that would be a capital outlay project the parish would have to find money for.

The flooding on Bayou Gardens is just one of a number of drainage issues Parish President Gordon Dove, Toups and parish employees have been working on over the past few weeks. According to Toups, his department will receive about 300-350 phone calls, most pertaining to street flooding, on a rainy day. Public Works crews are dispatched throughout the day to clean out clogged catch basins and culverts. Even as those are cleaned out, Toups said, drainage systems can still be overloaded with heavy amounts of rain in a short amount of time.

As Tropical Storm Cindy headed for the Louisiana coast, Terrebonne Parish declared a state of emergency to mobilize parish response protocols. While the storm’s worst mostly bypassed the region, the parish still purchased two used, 12-inch pumps during the emergency, with council approval, to supplement the two 16-inch pumps on Tina St. at Bayou Dularge. According to Toups, almost two months ago two people had water in their houses in that neighborhood during a big rain event. He said the parish has already added one pump and is in the process of adding the adding the second.

A bevy of people were at the parish council’s committee meetings two weeks ago to bring their own drainage issues before the council. Ronald Bourgeois spoke about the flooding for the past two months on Savanne Rd. He said in his 20 years living there, he had never seen it like it has been, with four to five feet of water on one side flowing back toward him. According to Bourgeois, dams in parish ditches are the culprits for stopping the flow of water. Parish Manager Al Levron explained when the parish acquired the rights of ways to build Valhi Extension, the road cut through a private agricultural drainage system. As part of the agreement, the parish agreed to allow for the dams and a private pump station to maintain that drainage system. Toups said the parish has added a 12-inch centrifugal pump to Savanne Rd. to assist in the drainage, and it is “working very well” in draining the ditch.

Many residents at the committee meeting were there to speak on the flooding at the Plantation Gardens subdivision off of Bayou Black. Residents said the Terre Cane subdivision directly to the west of Plantation Gardens has been built up and is draining into their subdivision. Wayne Bunch said the problem has been getting progressively worse over his four years living there.

“Our neighborhood is not a flood zone. I don’t have to have flood insurance, but I have it. With the way it keeps going, if something’s not done, I’m going to need it soon,” Bunch said.

Andy Marcel said he could raise his property and fix his flooding issue, but that would just pass on the problem to his neighbor. He said the issue has been going on for five or six years, and when he spoke with the drainage board he was told it was a civil issue.

At the meeting, Dove and parish council members listened intently and asked residents about their challenges to get a better understanding. Dove assured Marcel and others his administration would be working to solve the problems.

“Let me get my engineering people back there to see if it’s civil or not. If there’s something this parish can do, I assure you I will do it,” Dove said.

Toups said his department has been working on cleaning out culverts and ditches to improve drainage in Plantation Gardens and is adding a 48-inch-diameter culvert with a sluice gate to allow water to drain south from the subdivision through a ditch and into the Intracoastal. According to Toups, he ordered the sluice gate about two weeks ago, and there is a three to four week delivery on it. He said he expects the culvert cleaning and the sluice gate to fully solve the issue. If not, both Dove and Toups said the remaining option would be to create a forced drainage system with a pump station and set of ring levees around it.

Dove and council members placed a considerable amount of blame for flooding in the Bayou Black area at the feet of the federal government. Dove said a lot of the flooding is from the Atchafalya River’s increased height, 4 ft. higher than usual, due to the United States Army Corps of Engineers draining the Mississippi River when the river stages were high.

“The federal government has a responsibility to take care of this problem, and for 20 years it hasn’t,” Dove said.

Terrebonne’s long-term solution for the Chacahoula Basin area is the Hansen Canal pump station. The council is set to vote on allocating $4.1 million to the project at tonight’s meeting, with an affirmative vote expected. Toups said the station will feature two 48-inch and one 36-inch pump. Dove said while the pumps are not as big as he would have liked, they are electric, which means they can run 24/7 with a generator, which Dove plans to acquire, as well. Toups said the project is currently in the engineering phase, expecting that to last another two to three months. Toups estimated construction would take between a year and 18 months to finish once a bid for the project is approved. While the USACE’s permitting process is a notorious drag on project expedience, Dove said his administration does not foresee any issues with the pump station.

“We don’t anticipate a problem with the permitting. You know, the corps is the corps,” Dove said. “We’re not waiting on the corps anymore. We’re going forward.”

Bayou Gardens Boulevard is high and dry when there’s no rain in the forecast. But locals say the area floods easily during moderate rain events.

KARL GOMMEL | THE TIMES

Terrebonne Parish President Gordon Dove said some of Terrebonne Parish’s flooding issues date back decades and stem from federal government’s work draining the Mississippi River. The parish is working aggressively to try and remedy some of the issues as best it can to protect the people of the parish.

FILE | THE TIMES