2025 was a year of changes still to come

It would be trite to call 2025 a year of change in St. Mary Parish. It would be more accurate to say that the year now ending set us up for changes to come, economically and politically.
There were plenty of disputes between local governments, some of which fueled the desire to make improvements. The biggest change of all, potentially at least, came from the parish’s shipbuilding industry.
Here are some of the stories that made news in 2025.
Charter
changes?
Between budget fights in the Parish Council, never-ending conflicts with boards and commissions, and arguments over who should be eligible for council leadership posts, the 40-year-old parish home rule charter is showing its age.
The Parish Council in April appointed an 11-member Charter Review Commission empowered to suggest charter amendments to voters without direct input from council members.
Among the proposals:
•Reducing the parish council from 11 members to eight single-member districts, eliminating the three at-large seats.
•Updating the council and parish-president compensation to reflect current duties, with cost-of-living adjustments every four years.
•Establishing term limits of 1-1/2 consecutive terms for both the council and the parish president.
•Designating the parish president as chief executive and administrative officer, eliminating the separate chief administrative officer position.
•Clarifying procedures for vacancies, meetings and publications of ordinances.
•Removing obsolete or redundant sections, including outdated ballot and district provisions.
The proposals would move St. Mary toward a goal sought by many observers, including current Parish President Sam Jones. That’s to make the presidency a full-time post. (Jones says he will not run for re-election.)
The commission’s proposals could go to voters as soon as July.
Taking the
sea route
This year saw a lot of moving and shaking in local shipyards.
Conrad Industries and Metal Shark each announced new partnerships: Conrad to enter the new frontiers in liquefied natural gas “bunkering,” or fueling vessels with LNG, and Metal Shark to add to radar capabilities on its autonomous vessels.
Congress also approved a $140 million appropriation to build more yard repair berthing and messing vessels. Conrad delivered the first YRBM vessel from its Amelia yard in 2024.
But the biggest development came when Texas-based Saronic announced a $300 million investment and the potential creation of 1,500 direct jobs at its new yard on the Charenton Canal.
Saronic acquired the former Gulf Craft yard across the canal from Metal Shark. The company announced plans to build its 180-foot autonomous vessel Marauder at its St. Mary site, and followed earlier this month by laying out its plans for expansion.
That and other developments offered some hope for reversing a decline in St. Mary shipbuilding employment. In the decade ending in 2024, the local industry lost about 40% of its 2014 payroll of about 1,100 people — a number that could be dwarfed if Saronic’s plans come to fruition.
Pump station
rehabilitation
St. Mary people had more than the obvious reason to be thankful the 2025 hurricane predictions were overblown. We were still coping with the damage inflicted by Hurricane Francine on Sept. 11, 2024.
The rain that Francine dumped on the Morgan City area measured 10 inches officially, 20 or more anecdotally. Whatever it was, it overwhelmed the city’s extensive system of pump stations designed to move water quickly outside the levee system.
But the system didn’t. Francine pushed water into more than 300 Morgan City homes.
Questions quickly arose about the design of a new pump station No. 9 near Lake Palourde and about the way pump stations had been maintained.
In the midst of the fallout, Jones made a connection with Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority’s Gordy Dove, the result of which was a $12 million-$14 million commitment to upgrade the pump stations in Gravity Drainage District 2A.
The St. Mary Levee District has handled the administrative end of improving and repairing the pump stations.
At Pump Station No. 4, which serves the Marquis Manor area, bids have been let to bring the number of functioning pumps there to five.
At Pump Station No. 9, the Lake Palourde station, bids on equipment will be opened Jan. 9. The construction plans are being reviewed by the CPRA.
Plans for Pump Station No. 8 have been reviewed by the CPRA and will go to bid soon. That station serves the Lakeside, Siracusa and Wyandotte areas.
The Levee District is still developing plans for Pump Station No. 6 near the Central Fire Station.
The ripples from the hurricane went beyond the first floor of flooded homes. After complaints about slow responses to questions about what happened during Francine, the Parish Council voted to remove the board of Gravity Drainage District 2A, including Chairman Charlie Solar, who is Morgan City’s chief administrative officer. In reaction, Morgan City Mayor Lee Dragna said the city government will no longer provide free labor to work at the pump stations, a chore the city has shared with district employees.
The weather
got weird
We expected hurricanes in 2025, but we didn’t get them.
We didn’t expect a blizzard warning, but we got one.
And that was the weather in 2025.
The hurricane forecasts before the June 1 start of the tropical weather season were dire, even more so because St. Mary people were still recovering from Hurricane Francine in September 2024.
The consensus among preseason hurricane predictions was for 13-19 named storms, 6-10 storms reaching hurricane wind speeds of at least 74 mph, and 4-6 major hurricanes with winds of at least 111 mph.
The forecasts weren’t completely off base. There were 13 named storms in 2025, four of which became major hurricanes.
But, for only the eighth time in a century, no hurricane made landfall in the United States. Only South Carolina, which got drenched by Tropical Storm Chantal in July, had to cope with tropical weather.
On the other end of the weather scale, the winter storm of Jan. 20-22 dumped more snow on St. Mary Parish than we’ve seen in decades. The National Weather Service map of snowfall amounts put Morgan City in the 8- to 10-inch area.
And, although we were spared the single-digit temperatures that afflicted Baton Rouge and New Iberia, the mercury nevertheless plunged to 18 degrees Jan. 22.
The National Weather Service issued a blizzard advisory for the Louisiana coast from Calcasieu to Vermilion, the first warning of its kind.
The winter storm was named Eowyn, which in Old English means “horse-joy.”
Not flush
with cash
Barring an Environmental Protection Agency crackdown or a catastrophic failure, we don’t expect the local sewer commission to make news. But the Wards 5 & 8 Joint Sewer Commission did just that with a rate hike last summer.
The commission's facilities treat sewage from Berwick, Patterson and unincorporated areas of the eastern parish. In the case of Berwick and Patterson, the commission bills the municipalities, which in turn charge their residents.
In August, the commission sent “to whom it may concern” letters to Berwick and Patterson, saying the rate charged by the commission was being increased by $1.50 per 1,000 gallons.
The reaction was quick. Officials in both municipalities objected, citing the lack of a recent rate study or any other information that could justify the increase.
And, because charges to consumers must be set by ordinance, Berwick and Patterson were on the hook for a month or two of increased charges that couldn’t be passed along to customers.
Commission Chairman Chris Cooper appeared at a Patterson City Council meeting and blamed the need for a rate hike on aging infrastructure and $70,000 in pump rentals during Hurricane Francine.
Even so, the reaction was so fierce that Cooper resigned, saying, “What is very disappointing is that no one requested that we meet face to face and try to come to some kind of agreement that could be brought to the councils and board to help all the area.”
Cooper eventually rejoined the commission. And slowly, the furor died down as meetings between the commissioners and municipal officials made clear that the local sewage treatment infrastructure needs upgrades that could cost millions. The search for state funding assistance began.
Hospital ailment?
In July, the Review reported that Ochsner St. Mary and Bayou Bend Health System appeared on a list of rural hospitals at risk of closure if Medicaid cuts in President Donald Trump’s “big beautiful bill” passed, which it eventually did. The judgment was based on the fact that both St. Mary hospitals are among the 10% nationally that rely most on Medicaid.
The warning came out of an analysis by the University of North Carolina’s Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research, performed at the request of Democratic opponents of the cuts.
Supporters pointed out that the cuts won’t take effect for five years, and both local hospitals issued statements reassuring the community about their financial health.
But concerns remain.
Rural hospitals were already feeling financial pressure. KFF, formerly the Kaiser Family Foundation, counted 62 rural hospital closures 2017-2024. Opponents of the cuts say reductions would take $900 billion out of Medicaid over 10 years.
The Trump legislation includes additional funding for rural hospitals, but the $10 billion comes with strings attached, including participation in the Trump administration’s “Make America Healthy Again” goals.
The study
In June, the Trump administration’s budget cuts forced a pause in a mammoth five-year, $20 million study of the future management of the Mississippi. The delay was not bad news for South Louisiana.
The Lower Mississippi River Comprehensive Management Study is to examine a wide array of issues facing river management from Cape Girardeau, Missouri, south.
But some local officials worried that the study might result in changes that would be bad for the Morgan City area, potentially even a change in the amount of Mississippi River water diverted into the Atchafalaya system.
Commercial, political and environmental interests in Mississippi have complained about adverse impacts from relying on the Bonnet Carré Spillway, rather than the Morganza Spillway, to divert water from the Mississippi during floods. Officials in our neighboring state have been lobbying for fewer openings at Bonnet Carré and more for Morganza.
The fear here is that the study might be used to justify changing the 30% of the Mississippi that gets diverted into the Atchafalaya, increasing the flood risk for Morgan City.
But for now, the study is on hold.