Levee District lends a hand with Yokely Bayou work

The St. Mary Levee District is lending a special power to a long-delayed effort to clear the Yokely Bayou in the Franklin area for food control.
The district’s Board of Commissioners voted Thursday to authorize an intergovernmental agreement with three other entities that would allow them to make use of the district’s special power to acquire land rights to make the work possible.
The entities are the state government, St. Mary Gravity Drainage District No. 1 and the Franklin city government.
Flooding, especially storm surge flooding, in western St. Mary has been a source of concern for governments with responsibility for flood control.
The Levee District is currently extending the Yokely Levee in the area near the Metal Shark and Gulf Craft shipyards. Farther north, the district is overseeing construction of the largely state-funded $11.4 million Bayou Teche Flood Control Structure, designed to block storm surge from coming up the Charenton Canal into the Teche.
Clearing the Yokely Bayou is a smaller project, but it’s been a bigger headache.
The attempt to dredge the bayou so it will be able to carry away more water started in 2008, said Gerard Bourgeois, legal counsel for the Levee District.
Governments are generally entitled to acquire private land or easements on private land for public purposes in exchange for a fair market price.
But landowners can challenge the move in court before the acquisition takes effect, and they often do, and often over a disagreement about what constitutes a fair price.
That process has gone on for years in the Yokely Bayou case. Appraisals expire after six months, Bourgeois said, and attorney J.P. Morella, who was involved in the case, died in 2017.
More recently, the COVID-19 mitigation rules have slowed action in the courts.
But levee districts are allowed to acquire the rights in advance of a challenge, Bourgeois said.
“Levee districts and ports take possession and then argue about it later,” he said.
The acquisition would take the form of a permanent easement.
“People could still go out [on the easement] and have picnics on the bayou or whatever,” Bourgeois said, “but they can’t build on it.”