Top stories of 2019: High water made news (again)

Staff Report
The trouble with the weather, according to an old and not very funny joke, is that everyone talks about it, but nobody does anything.
We've talked about the weather, which wasn't funny either, a lot in 2019. We've spent money, too, on sandbags and home repairs.
But officials have made at least a start toward doing something about it. They came up with $80 million for a long-needed permanent flood control structure on Bayou Chene in a year when Atchafalaya River flooding became a problem for the third time in nine years.
City officials also began looking for long-term drainage solutions after flash flooding made its way into homes in April and June.
And then there was the hurricane. We expected more flooding from Hurricane Barry in July. What we got was a weekend without lights or AC.
When we weren't talking about weather, we were talking about politics. St. Mary's favored candidate or governor lost. But we elected a new state representative and seven new Parish Council members.
Here's our roundup of the top stories in the Tri-City area in 2019:

River flooding
As spring approached, the dominoes began to fall.
A heavy snow melt and even heavier rains up north pushed huge volumes of water down the Mississippi River system. The Mississippi River gauge at Baton Rouge stayed above flood stage for 211 days.
And as more water came down the Red and Mississippi rivers, more water came down the Atchafalaya system. As the river rose, back-flooding began to threaten homes in Stephensville and other areas in lower St. Martin by Mardi Gras. Eventually water rose over La. 70 north of Stephensville.
The solution used to combat such flooding in the past – sinking a barge in the St. Mary Parish portion of the Bayou, a multimillion-dollar job – began to be contemplated by Memorial Day. The matter acquired new urgency when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced plans in late May to open the Morganza Spillway, diverting even more water down the Atchafalaya.
The sinking of the barge for the fourth time since 1973, and the third time since 2011, worked almost immediately. Department of Transportation and Development crews also deployed a new kind of barrier to keep the water off La. 70. Eventually the river fell and waterways returned to normal.
Except that things weren’t quite normal. Sinking the barge cost millions, most of which would be reimbursed through the state and federal governments.
By the time summer turned to fall, receding water left shoals in important local waterways, including even Berwick Bay. The price for dredging them to the proper width and depth has yet to be determined.

Flash flooding
As if the water rolling down the river wasn’t bad enough, the region was hit by two flash floods from rain heavy enough to cause widespread street flooding and push water into homes.
On April 4, about 6.4 inches of rain fell on Patterson’s Harry P. Williams Airport in 12 hours, including 3 inches 11 a.m.-noon. Another 1.8 inches fell in the hour after lunch.
The resulting flooding showed up in Berwick’s Country Club Estates Subdivision and in Patterson south of the railroad tracks. Bayou Vista also reported street flooding. Patterson’s city government posted Facebook pictures of employees mopping up water in the City Hall lobby.
Then, on June 7, 4.2 inches of rain fell in the morning, including 2 inches 11 a.m.-noon. This time, water wound up in 39 homes in Country Club Estates, where residents told the town council that no such flooding had occurred until recently.
The local governments began to look at flood control measures.
In Patterson, eight staff gauges were placed around town to collect data on the water flow. That data will go into a computer model that will be used to identify the structural changes needed to improve drainage.
Berwick came up with a three-tiered plan that included enlarging a ditch’s capacity, bigger culverts and improved storm sewers.
The remaining question is money. Berwick has completed the ditch work and is waiting for word on grant funding. Patterson expects needed flood control work to run into the millions.

Hurricane Barry
Just as hurricane season is about to begin each year, the Confraternity of Our Lady Star of the Sea meets at the Spirit of Morgan City shrimp boat in the median of Brashear Avenue. They pray for protection from tropical weather.
Were their prayers answered in 2019? You be the judge.
The storm that would become Hurricane Barry had an odd start near the Kansas-Missouri border before making its way into the Gulf of Mexico and intensifying rapidly. The danger was expected to come from storm surge and, because the storm was moving slowly, heavy rain. Some of the more extravagant forecasts called for 15-25 inches of rain for St. Mary people already jittery after river and flash flooding since the spring.
“We were expecting a rain event,” Morgan City Mayor Frank “Boo” Grizzaffi said. “We got a wind event.”
Although the rain wasn’t especially heavy, and Barry’s wind didn’t stay above the 74 mph hurricane threshold long after the eye came ashore July 13 at Marsh Island, the storm caused no end of problems.
Between them, Entergy and Cleco reported power outages affecting 114,000 customers, including virtually all of St. Mary Parish. Wind blew down lines, knocked down limbs on more lines, and generally complicated the work of local and out-of-area utility crews that answered the call.
One levee was over-topped in the Burns Point area because of storm surge flooding, and isolated roof damage was reported. President Donald Trump signed the disaster declaration that will help local governments pay for storm-related expenses, and businesses became eligible for emergency Small Business Administration loans.
But the damage to homes and other personal property was judged insufficient to justify federal disaster aid to private individuals.
The lingering memory of Barry will be of a weekend spent mostly without air-conditioning and electric lights during a Louisiana summer.

State elections
Say it all together now: “The only Democratic governor in the Deep South.”
National media used the phrase over and over as Democrat John Bel Edwards sought reelection in deep red Louisiana, hoping for a glimpse of President Donald Trump’s 2020 election prospects.
After sales tax increases to stabilize the state budget in his first term, Edwards appeared vulnerable – especially after businessman Eddie Rispone and U.S. Rep. Ralph Abraham, both Republicans, together out-polled Edwards 51%-47% in the Oct. 12 primary.
It was Rispone, who had never run for office, who won the second spot in the Nov.

16 runoff against Edwards. Trump campaigned frequently for Rispone in Louisiana despite what had been considered a decent working relationship with Edwards.
Rispone, who spoke to the St. Mary Industrial Group and had a meet-and-greet at Morgan City’s Atchafalaya Café during the campaign, hit Edwards on the tax increases and on what Rispone called the governor’s support of lawsuits against the oil and gas industry. Edwards claimed credit for straightening out Louisiana’s chronic budget shortfalls.
Rispone had an 11,000-vote edge late in the general election tabulations Nov. 16, but late returns from Orleans and East Baton Rouge helped push Edwards to a 42,200-vote win.
Elsewhere, other statewide officials picked up easy reelection by big primary or general election margins: Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser, Attorney General Jeff Landry, Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin, Treasurer John Schroeder, Insurance Commissioner Jim Donelon and Agriculture Commissioner Mike Strain.

St. Mary elections
Contested races were all up and down the ballot for St. Mary Parish Council posts, and two men – Morgan City Mayor Frank “Boo” Grizzaffi and retired state police Trooper Todd Pellerin — wanted to be the new sheriff in town.
On the Parish Council side, four incumbents qualified for reelection without opposition: Craig Mathews of Franklin, J Ina of Jeanerette, and James Bennett and Patrick Hebert of Morgan City.
The only other incumbent who ran to stay on the council was Dale Rogers, who lost to Kristi Prejeant in District 9, one of three parishwide at-large districts.
The seven new members of the 11-member Parish Council include Prejeant and Gwendolyn Hidalgo, the first two women elected to the council in the parish charter era.
Incumbent Sheriff Blaise Smith won the race to fill Mark Hebert’s unexpired term in fall 2018 after edging Grizzaffi out of the runoff against interim Sheriff Scott Anslum. In 2019, Grizzaffi had hoped that Pellerin would eat into Smith’s west St. Mary support enough to let Grizzaffi win on the strength of east St. Mary voters.
But Smith won the primary outright with 55% of the vote.
Parish President David Hanagriff and Clerk of Court Cliff Dressel won handy reelection victories. Coroner Eric Melancon and Assessor Jarrod Longman were unopposed for reelection.
St. Mary will say goodbye to a longtime state legislator in Rep. Sam Jones, a Democrat from Franklin who was term-limited. Vincent St. Blanc helped add to Republican strength in the House of Representatives by beating former Franklin Mayor Raymond Harris for the right to succeed Jones.
State Sen Bret Allain, R-Franklin, was considered a candidate for the Senate presidency before reports said Lafayette’s Page Cortez had the leadership post sewn up. Allain was unopposed for reelection.
Another Republican, Beryl Amedee, won reelection in a largely Terrebonne Parish District 51 that reaches into east St. Mary.

Ochsner St. Mary
The monthly meetings of the St. Mary Hospital Service District No. 2 board got lively after LifePoint announced in 2018 that it wanted out of the lease under which it had operated Teche Regional Medical Center. The uncertainty among staff members over their future, and of Teche Regional itself at a time when economically pressured rural hospitals are closing across the country, spilled over into the meetings.
Dr. William Cefalu, who took over as board chairman this year, wrote a public letter saying that LifePoint had lost millions in the previous four years and hadn’t been making payments to the district under its lease.
The search for a new management operation for the hospital boiled down to three possibilities, and then down to one: Ochsner Health Group, a rapidly expanding organization and Louisiana’s largest employer.
Finally, in March, Gov. Edwards, who legislators said had intervened on the hospital’s behalf with Ochsner, came to Teche Regional’s meditation garden to announced that an agreement in principle had been reached with Ochsner.
Teche Regional became Ochsner St. Mary. The company agreed to pay the district about $150,000 per month, to guarantee providers for a list of primary health care services and to install its electronic records system, designed to give patients more access to their medical information.
There also hopes that the Ochsner name will help recruit health care professionals, one of the key challenges for rural hospitals.

Bayou Chene
For years, state lawmakers said, discussions with administration officials about capital improvement projects involving St. Mary included to word: “Bayou Chene.” It was a reference to the long-needed permanent flood control structure on Bayou Chene, needed to prevent backwater flooding when the Atchafalaya River runs high.
The temporary solution, deployed four times including 2019, was to sink a barge in Bayou Chene. The expensive remedy was needed to protect not just the hardest-hit areas in lower St. Martin Parish but in other surrounding parishes, too. The trouble was the cost: an estimated $80 million.
Then, on the same day the governor arrived in Morgan City to announce the Ochsner hospital deal, he announced that funding had been obtained through the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority. That agency’s chairman, Chip Kline, joked at the announcement event that he could respond to lawmakers with two words: “Fully funded.”
The project is already under way under the auspices of the St. Mary Parish Levee District. Land is being cleared along the Tabor Canal to make way for a levee, which will be the last part of the work to be completed. Contracts have either been let or are being prepared for the installation of the flood gate itself and for the necessary dredging.

St. Mary Excel
After more than four years of economic doldrums, a citizens group called St. Mary Excel raised $135,000 from public and private sources to commission an Urban Land Institute study focusing on development opportunities in Berwick and Morgan City. The original idea was to focus on St. Mary Parish, but the institute, a collection of experts on urban planning and development, insisted on a narrower focus.
The study was dated September 2018, but city officials met this year to see how they were doing in implementing the study’s recommendations.
One suggestion proved popular immediately. The La. 182 bridge linking the two municipalities began to be closed to motor vehicles one Saturday each month to accommodate bicycle riders and walking.
The broader picture presented in the study included a needed to develop specialty retail and special waterfront events to bring life back to Berwick’s downtown and a pedestrian-friendly connection between Morgan City’s Front Street and Lawrence Park.
The communities need more affordable housing, said the study, which laid out some funding options.
On the purely economic side, the study put an emphasis on the local shipbuilding industry, including a suggested database of repair business.

Ghosts
After four years of struggling with the economy, the Tri-City area got a little national love – paranormal style – with the June premiere of “Ghosts of Morgan City,” an eight-episode Travel Channel series based on incidents real or imagined in St. Mary Parish.
There are different versions of how the series came about. The press release version is that Morgan City police fielded reports of a ghostly mist somehow connected with the 90-year-old case of Ada LeBoeuf, who was hanged in 1929 for her alleged role in a murder plot. The story goes that Morgan City police looked for help from colleagues in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, which by the darnedest coincidence had been the subject of the Travel Channel’s “Ghosts of Shepherdstown.”
The more prosaic explanation is that a former Morgan City police chief moved to the East Coast, where he passed along some St. Mary ghost stories to a neighbor who happened to be a TV executive.
However the series came to be, it was greeted enthusiastically by the locals at a premiere at Franklin’s Teche Theatre and with a curtain-closer in Morgan City.

School scores
St. Mary almost made it to A district status.
But, for the second year since the Louisiana Department of Education raised key standards in the annual LEAP tests, the parish had to settle for a B. Before the change, St. Mary had come within fractions of a point of earning an A.
Still, the B grade is an accomplishment in a parish with a declining enrollment and uncertain tax base, and where 70% of students are judged to be from low-income homes.
The emphasis on meeting state standards became a matter of controversy at Wyandotte Elementary School, which had resisted a move toward departmentalization for students as young as kindergarten age. Departmentalization means separate classes for students with teachers specializing in key subjects rather than the more traditional one-teacher-all-day approach for the youngest children.
More debate looms, this time about money. After a public meeting Dec. 12, the St. Mary Parish School Board passed a resolution asking for a May 9 tax proposition. If voters approve, the board will levy an additional 0.5% in sales tax to pay for a raise for teachers and other staff members.
Grizzaffi and Hanagriff have both made public statements making it clear that they don’t like the idea of new taxes at a time when the economy is struggling.