Watershed management is seen as one avenue to mitigate flooding

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By Harlan Kirgan
Editor
Seemingly frequent and devastating flooding the past two years is prompting leaders in the state and locally to look back to an old idea of watershed management.
St. Landry Parish President Bill Fontenot said his father worked for the U.S. Soil Conservation Service and growing up he heard constant talk about watershed issues.
That talk has returned in response flooding.
In May, Gov. John Bel Edwards created the Council on Watershed Management to focus on regional solutions to flood mitigation and drainage planning.
Fontenot said, “It is one of the best executive orders I’ve ever witnessed and I’ve been in government 40-something years.”
Fontenot, who also serves as Acadiana Planning Commission chairman, said the approach is one that worked in the past.
“This makes a very positive step to putting back a package or program planning that once worked way back 30 or 40 years ago,” he said.
Decades ago farmers needed government assistance to deal with their localized drainage issues, but the advent of powerful agricultural machines meant farmers could take care of issues themselves.
Largely left behind was a big picture approach to the movement of water.
In recent years, when a flood occurs local and state officials would go to the Federal Emergency Management Agency for funding to repair the damage and do some mitigation work, Fontenot said.
But the mitigation work was localized, he said.
Fontenot said an initial watershed project is to install water gauges throughout the parishes of Acadia, Evangeline, Iberia, Lafayette, St. Landry, St. Martin, Vermilion and St. Mary parishes.
“You need a model of each watershed,’ he said.
The governor’s executive order made a special meeting of the Acadiana Planning Commission in Baton Rouge creates a council that includes state agencies is to build on the Commission’s focus on its major watershed, the Vermilion, Teche and Mermanteau.
Earlier this year $25 million in projects in Acadiana were funded, including the $2.4 million river gauge project.
The other Acadiana projects mostly involve retention projects.
The money is coming from FEMA and the projects have not been approved.
Louisiana is to receive $1.2 billion in disaster funds from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The money is to be spent statewide in floodplains and watersheds.
Flood and drainage issues are a nearly constant discussion at St. Landry Parish Council meeting.
The lines on the issue were already being exhibited at a June 6 Public Works Committee meeting.
Council member Jerry Red suggested the study and explained many areas of the parish do not have adequately funded drainage districts. Those district also do not a tax base sufficient to fund drainage work, he said.
But Councilman Wayne Ardoin said, “Go up on the tax. Get your people to get involved and then you’ll have funding.”
Councilman Timmy Lejeune said, “We are going to have to generate some revenue if we are going to want to run with big boys and that’s federal dollars.”
Fontenot noted St. Martin Parish, which also has a parish council form of government, has a parishwide tax for drainage and recently started a $25 million local project.