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More people adopting 'do it yourself' mentality as neighbors help clear drainage ditch

2 years 8 months 4 weeks ago Friday, June 18 2021 Jun 18, 2021 June 18, 2021 7:07 PM June 18, 2021 in News
Source: WBRZ

BATON ROUGE - While the threat of rain may be easing for the Baton Rouge area, some neighborhoods are still on edge, especially those who flooded last month.

One neighborhood is not waiting around for someone else to get the job done. A group of neighbors in Old Jefferson got together this morning to do it themselves.

A ditch behind Proxie Drive has been a problem spot to people living nearby for years. Neighbors assembled Friday morning, bringing their tools and renting a tractor to get the job done.

"I appreciate that the city is busy, but we've reported it," Tom Patterson said.

Neighbors clearing the problem spot Friday have reported the issue since 2016. They say the city came to spray the vegetation with herbicide, but overgrowth and downed trees have piled up over the years.

"A lot of the damage was done with downed trees from Hurricane Andrew, which was 29 years ago and they never got cleaned up," Yvette Cormier said.

Homes along Proxie Drive flooded last month, and some homeowners placed sandbags around their front doors. Homeowners had another issue with water this month on June 6.

"The other day, with that hard rain, the water was just flowing from the woods down these people's driveway and into the street," Yvette said. "Even when the rain had stopped for two hours it was still pouring out."

The hope is the work being done will help with drainage problems the neighborhood is experiencing. The ditch connects to Claycut Bayou.

"We're trying to do anything to help these folks from flooding or even the fear of flooding," Scott Cormier said.

The city-parish says this week drainage crews continue to work service requests, and maintenance crews help with ditch digging. They are also inspecting all 6,418 city-parish streets ahead of the rain.

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