Morgan City mayor pledges to keep Lakeside gate closed

FRANKLIN — Morgan City Mayor Lee Dragna didn’t get to say his piece about the Walnut Street flood-control barge and Tuesday’s flooding in Lakeside Subdivision.
But as he left the St. Mary Courthouse during Wednesday’s Parish Council meeting, Dragna pledged to use an executive order to keep the Walnut Street barge from being opened. The mayor blames the newly consolidated Amelia-Morgan City drainage district for not closing the flood-control structure in time for Tuesday’s 8- to 10-inch downpour.
The gate was closed by the consolidated district Wednesday.
“I’ll put them in jail if they try to open that gate,” Dragna said as he walked from the courthouse.
Dragna came to Wednesday’s meeting armed with a 2015 report by T. Baker Smith engineering firm called “Walnut Canal Barge Gate Operational Analysis & Future Improvements.”
The report was developed for what was then St. Mary Parish Gravity Drainage No. 2, which served the Morgan City area. Last year, the Parish Council merged the district with the district serving Amelia.
The Morgan City district handles the opening and closing of the barge gate. The report recommends closing the gate when the Lake Palourde stage at Lake End Park reaches 1.75 feet of elevation. Basing its recommendations on average minimums and maximums over a five-year period, Smith also recommended close monitoring of the stage when it reaches 1.5 feet.
The gauge was at 1.7 feet early Tuesday morning and rose to 2.6 feet by the end of the day.
The National Weather Service online graph, which measures the lake level on a different scale, says the level was above 4 feet, which the service labels the "action" level, March 18. The level dipped below 4 feet and stayed there, except for two brief rises, until Tuesday morning. With the rain falling, the lake level rose from 3.81 to 4.79 feet in 16 hours Tuesday. The minor flood stage is 5 feet, according to the National Weather Service.
The gate should have been closed for some time before Tuesday’s downpour, Dragna said.
“That’s why those houses flooded,” he said.
Dragna didn’t get the chance to make his case to the Parish Council. He was not on the agenda, which was published Friday.
Councilman James Bennett of Morgan City made a motion to put Dragna on the agenda.
But Councilman Craig Mathews cast a no vote on the motion, which needed a unanimous vote to pass. So Dragna was denied the chance to speak.
“I believe the issue he wanted to bring forward,” Mathews said after the meeting, “in addition to being against our protocols, should be handled by the local (drainage) board.
“I don’t like the idea of bending the rules for some people and not for others.”
Coincidentally, Coun-cilman J Ina had asked for an agenda item calling for discussion of the rules governing public comments at Parish Council meetings. Ina withdrew the item Wednesday, saying he wanted to talk with legal counsel Eric Duplantis before taking up the public comment rules.
After Wednesday’s meeting, Parish President David Hanagriff said he wonders what an order from Dragna would accomplish because the barge gate had been closed earlier in the day.
Hanagriff used his spot on the agenda to praise public employees who had worked during the high-water event.
Tuesday’s storm brought “more rain than we got in any hurricane for a long time,” Hanagriff said. “More rain than I can remember.”
The storm pointed out some areas where the parish needs improvement, he said, and work on those areas will continue.
Hanagriff was the chief proponent of the merger of the Amelia and Morgan City drainage districts, saying consolidation will save on administrative costs. Dragna, who had chaired the board of the Morgan City district, challenged the legality of the merger on procedural grounds.
He said discussion on the consolidation was improperly cut off by a call for the question as the council considered the merger.

This story has been edited to clarify the Lake Palourde gauge readings.