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Recent flood victims share drainage concerns ahead of wet week

2 years 9 months 3 days ago Tuesday, June 15 2021 Jun 15, 2021 June 15, 2021 5:22 PM June 15, 2021 in News
Source: WBRZ

BATON ROUGE - Ahead of the rain this week, maintenance crews in Baton Rouge are digging out ditches and sucking debris from pipes. They're fulfilling maintenance requests through the drainage department before storms.

People say it's necessary since they're worried about flooding again after May's heavy rain that flooded hundreds of homes. This week is bringing up some traumatic memories they'd like to forget.

For the last few weeks, Amelia Chauvin has been working hard to repair her house after it flooded with four inches of water last month. While she says she might be more fortunate than others, she still can't believe it happened since her neighborhood has never flooded before.

Now with more rain in the forecast, she's worried about what's to come, if something isn't done to fix the problem.

"We've never had our catch-basins or gutter boxes cleaned out in over 10 years, and the tributary, I guess at some point when we recuperate from our loss we'll probably get together and we'll probably end up cleaning the tributaries ourselves," said Chauvin.

Ward Creek runs behind homes in her neighborhood off Drusilla Lane. She says there is debris in there from the ice storm that hasn't been cleared.

The City-Parish worked to dig out a drainage ditch on Normandy Drive Tuesday. Downtown Baton Rouge a crew vacuumed out debris from a problem spot there. Last week, it says it completed 80 drainage projects and continues to work through its maintenance requests.

Chauvin says there's much more to do.

"We already know there's a problem, let's fix it," she said. "A lot of money, a lot of heartache, a lot of tears could be avoided by just taking federal funds that we already have, let's cut through the red tape, and let's fix the problem."

Now she fears with more rain coming that the works she has already done on her house will be for nothing.

"Very, very afraid," she said. "Especially since my house is a little over 50 percent fixed. If it floods again I'll have to fix my house again which at that point I don't know what I'll do."

The City-Parish says it's focused on doing drainage maintenance this week while watching the weather. It says it will take appropriate response steps as needed.

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