Drainage district a model for rest of parish

 

By Raymond L. Daye
Co-Editor
Controlling vegetation in drainage canals and bayous is important to maintaining proper drainage, as well as helping recreation and water quality.
Avoyelles Gravity Drainage District #1 recently sprayed Yellow Bayou and 15 miles of drainage canals by air as part of its ongoing maintenance program to control water lilies.
Golden Ranch Aviation of Raceland did the job with a helicopter.
“We were a little late this year because of the rain,” Henry Moreau, secretary/treasurer of the Drainage District, said. 
Moreau said this is the third time in four years the district has used a helicopter to spray to control vegetation in the drainageways.
Moreau said the Drainage District also installed four 7-foot culverts in Yellow Bayou and two 5-foot culverts in Brushy Bayou within the past year.
The district was created about 15 years ago and collects a 35-cents-per-acre tax to fund its maintenance efforts.
Moreau said he has developed a Powerpoint presentation that he gives to communities interested in creating a gravity drainage district.
The Avoyelles Police Jury has cited District #1 as a possible model to address the parish’s drainage problems either parishwide or through creation of large-area gravity drainage districts. 
The district encompasses all of the Atchafalaya Spillway in Avoyelles-- about 64,000 acres bordered by Bayou Des Glaises in the north, St. Landry Parish line in the south and the Spillway Levee at Hamburg on the west and the Atchafalaya River on the east less Simmesport, which is protected by a ring levee.
It does not include that portion of Simmesport inside the ring levee but does include properties in town that are located outside of that levee.
“We try to cooperate with land owners to get work done,” Moreau said. “If there is a culvert needed in a public waterway, we can help purchase the culvert and install it. We can’t do work on private property, of course.”
He said the district got a permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to replace undersized culverts in public drainageways within the Gravity District.
“We have been doing that as we can, going from the south to the north,” he added.
Moreau said it is important to also cooperate with the Police Jury and the Red River, Atchafalaya, Bayou Boeuf Levee Board “to make our little bit of maintenance money go as far as possible.
“For example, we may buy a culvert and the Levee Board will install it for us,” he said.
Moreau said the 35-cent per acre tax was approved by voters and was renewed a few years ago. The district could ask for a 50 cent per acre tax, or a property tax, if it decided to undertake any major capital improvement project.
“I think we’re the only drainage district that uses the per-acre tax,” he said. “Others use the property tax method.”
The per-acre method is best for this rural area because “if you send a property owner in town a tax notice for 35 cents, it costs you 50 cents to buy the stamp to mail the letter.”
Moreau said the legislation that allows the creation of a drainage district “is amazing. I am just surprised that more people don’t take advantage of it.”
One advantage is that the boundaries of the district are not political.
“It’s based on the drainage,” Moreau said. “A gravity drainage district could cross parish lines, but we don’t.”