DESTREHAN, La. — On a rainy Tuesday, piles of debris from weekend flooding sit outside homes along Ormond Boulevard in Destrehan. Those piles have folks who call St. Charles Parish home, calling for action to stop repeated flooding because of rain.
“We don’t have the drainage systems that we need and need badly in this area,” said one resident during a parish council meeting Monday night.
“The last six weeks have been unprecedented. Something has changed. We need action,” said another resident.
To help with that action, parish president Matthew Jewell says infrastructure projects to ease drainage are underway.
“On either side of Hill Heights, you will see equipment this week in those ditches, clearing trees and getting ready to move this dirt out of there,” Jewell said.
Monday night a big topic of conversation at the parish council meeting was a proposal from Jewell, to put a moratorium on new subdivision developments to allow the parish time to get a drainage masterplan in place. That moratorium failed. Councilwoman at-large Wendy Benedetto voted with the majority to table it.
“At this time it will not help,” Benedetto said. “We need immediate action right now.”
While Benedetto does agree a study should also be done, the money and time it would take for completion won’t help the immediate need.
“If we have rain next week, it’s very possible these people will flood again because we haven’t found the root of the problem,” Benedetto said.
Jewell did present a list of infrastructure projects Monday, some of which Benedetto says are old projects that never moved forward.
“We’ve been negotiating the scope of those engineering contracts now for a couple of weeks to make sure that everything is in order before we push forward,” Jewell said. “I know that’s not what a lot of people want to hear but these projects have to be engineered before we get them done.”
Whatever the project, parish leaders hope they give folks relief when mother nature strikes again.
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