PIERRE PART - Just off Highway 70 in Pierre Part, a Dollar General has become a literal island amid flood water.

"We have to park at the dollar store on a regular basis, have to use baskets to get back and forth. I actually have a little boat when school was going on because it's probably been since March that we've suffered with that," Breezy Rivere said.

These residents at the Oak Grove apartments are using the store's baskets to carry all of their necessities to their cars because they haven't been able to drive to their homes in months.

"The ambulance will not go, the garbage truck. It's been two weeks, they have not got our garbage," Rivere said.

Not even the postman will come back here.

"I'm about to go get the mail from the post office. I gotta walk through this water, get to the car at the dollar store," Trevor Leblanc said.

The water here is stagnant with slippery algae and fish, yet some chose to walk barefoot through it.

"It's really nasty. The sewer backed up a while back so you really don't know what's in the water," Leblanc said.

But the septic water is finally receding. Since workers sunk the barge in Bayou Chene, residents say the water here has gone down about a foot in a week.

"The barge works," Paul Hebert said. "You know, they finally put it in, but they let us suffer for four months. The anxiety of maybe losing our home, maybe losing all the businesses in Pierre Part."

With such rapid results, they're now asking why the state waited so long.

"Next time y'all don't gamble with our money, gamble with y'alls. Put the barge in place please," Hebert said.