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After years of planning, seeking support and waiting for funding from the federal government, the first steps to construct a new Charenton Floodgate on the west Atchafalaya Basin Protection Levee is at last under way.
Kimberly S. Walden, Chitimacha Cultural Department Director and Tribal Historic Preservation Officer, said that in 2009 the tribe learned that the United States Corps of Engineers and the St. Mary Parish Levee Board planned to close off the floodgate. Pumps would be installed in place of the gate.
“In our meetings with the Corps of Engineers we were able to talk to the colonel,” she said. “They come anytime a new colonel is installed to meet with the tribal council and those of us who work with the agency. I asked the Corps if they had the legal basis to close it, since the structure had been installed originally for two things, access and flood control.”
“Through research, they found that we were correct, and that the floodgate was put in for both reasons,” Walden said. “After that finding, they told us it would take a literal act of Congress to decommission the floodgate’s access component.”
The tribe continued to express a desire to keep the access between the channel connecting Bayou Teche to the floodgate, and subsequently the Atchafalaya River Basin. “At another meeting, they said that in checking their records no one was using the floodgate, so they would be justified in closing off the access point,” Walden said. “We asked, ‘Where is the phone number posted? What are these people told when they do call?’ We inquired about a chance to prove that people would use the gate if it was safe and operable.”
A public meeting was held and attended by some 77 individuals interested in the issue in October, 2010 at the tribal school gym. “Tribal members, people from surrounding communities and even people from Iberia Parish attended, which created a very impressive showing,” Walden said. “People took comment cards home and we really impressed upon the Corps that people would in fact do what we told them they would do: use that as an access point.”
At the meeting, discussions began on how to accomplish that, and Walden said ideally, the best avenue was a lock system. But the Corps said it could not be funded because it “couldn’t meet the economics of how their projects are funded. My husband asked, ‘If you put a new floodgate (on the basin side of the levee) and keep the existing structure in place, wouldn’t it create a lock system?’ And they said that it would. People in attendance were supportive of that idea.”
That ended up being the design that was settled on.
In a later conversation, Corps officials contacted Walden and said that due to cost, the gate width on the new structure would have to be smaller. “But we need to have access; that was the point of the design.” Walden noted. “They were questioning the maximum width of vessels that would use the floodgate.”
Walden herself spent much effort consulting with potential users and measuring houseboats to find a happy medium. “The problem then became funding,” she said.
The floodgate sits at the lowest point in the West Atchafalaya Basin System, and is also the oldest structure, having been built in 1948. “It has always been identified as a critical need, and now we have a design, so it was a shovel ready project waiting on funding since 2011,” Walden said. “We were told to press upon Congress the need for this budgeted project to be funded, because without design was as far as the Corps could go.”
Prior to a planned trip to Washington, DC in March of 2019, Walden sought out Congressmen Clay Higgins and Garrett Graves and scheduled appointments for Tribal Chairman Melissa Darden and herself. A meeting was held with their staff, and “the information was well-received; they seemed to appreciate our situation and need. Their staff committed to working together on this issue.”
There was no further contact for a time, until Valentine’s Day this year. “Not quite a year from our visit, I got a call from a very shocked senior project manager at the Corps,” Walden said. “She had gotten word that the Charenton floodgate had been funded. Not fully, but funded for the first phase.”
Walden said it is anticipated that the $17 million first phase will be followed by a budget for a second phase and third phase to complete. “They’re hopeful that phase two and three will be funded because the Corps doesn’t like to start a project and not complete it. So what we can announce is that phase one will begin very shortly. People will see dirt work beginning on the new alignment and other components that the current funding allows.”
As far the current structure, there are lead paint issues with the floodgate that must be mitigated. The structure has actually been listed on the National Register of Historic Properties, so it will remain. “Ideally the gates would be made operable so that we could utilize both the old and the new gate to create a lock system for safe passage. That is not in the scope of this project however.”
The floodgate has been closed and welded shut for a number of years now. Walden said, “Just for the health of the fisheries, keeping it closed all that time has had an impact, not to mention the silt that’s built up around there. Just having that flow would be important. Our idea (that of the Chitimacha Tribe and the Lake Fausse Point, Grand Avoille Cove, Lake Dauterieve Advisory Board) is to improve fisheries through dredging. Dredge barges will need to pass through the structure. It’s also important beyond just flood control…it’s economics, it’s history, and it’s tradition that held importance for a lot of people for a long time.”
Walden concluded that she is thankful to tribal members and residents of the surrounding area for supporting the tribe in its effort. “To come out and show the Corps what that structure meant to them, and express what their desires were,” she said. “I want them to know that their voice was heard, and it made a difference.”

In honor of Women’s History Month, we at Business.org thought we’d devote a little time to a subject that is near and dear to the interests of many women in business: the gender pay gap.
Though equal pay for equal work has been federally mandated since the passage of the Equal Pay Act of 1963, actual earnings for men versus women show that gender pay disparity is still an overwhelmingly common trend within the United States.
Because the gender pay gap has such serious consequences for women in business (especially female entrepreneurs), we did a little digging to find out which states offer the narrowest gender pay gaps in the country — and whether we’ve made any significant progress toward closing those gaps in the last decade.
So ... how are we doing?
According to the most recent American Community Survey, nationwide median earnings for women over the age of 16 average out to about 80.1% of the median earnings for men in the same age group. In other words, women in the U.S. workforce are making roughly $0.80 for every dollar earned by their male colleagues.
It’s not all doom and gloom, though. Compared to the 2010 ACS, the U.S. has actually narrowed the pay gap by a whole 2.6 percentage points. In fact, most states in the country have shown improvement.
That being said, the U.S. isn’t doing quite as well as many experts believe we should be. In 2016, the pay gap for women over the age of 25 actually widened by about 2.2 percentage points. While pay disparity has been improving since then, we still haven’t made up that ground, and some experts are doubtful it’s possible given the recent rollback of federal rules originally designed to further shrink the gender pay gap.
Interesting findings
California has the lowest pay gap in the country. Women in the Golden State make roughly 88 cents for every dollar earned by men. The state has also narrowed its pay gap by 4.6 percentage points since 2010.
Women in Washington, D.C., boast the highest median earnings. D.C. women earn a median of $70,911 per year. However, D.C. has also seen some of the worst regression in pay disparity. In fact, with a -4.2 percentage point difference compared to 2010, our nation’s capital has backslid more than any other area in the country apart from South Dakota.
Most of the top 10 states are located along the East Coast. New York, D.C., Maryland, Vermont, Florida and Delaware form the bulk of our top 10, along with outliers California, Nevada, Arkansas and Oregon.
Nearly every state has narrowed its gender pay gap since 2010. The only areas where pay disparity has gotten worse are South Dakota, D.C., New Hampshire, Alabama, North Dakota, New Jersey and Iowa.
Arkansas is the most improved. The state has narrowed its pay gap by an incredible 10.5 percentage points — the biggest improvement in the nation. That being said, the state’s median earnings for women are still one of the lowest in the nation at just $36,042 per year.
Women should avoid West Virginia and Louisiana. The Pelican State has the widest gender pay gap in the nation, with women making just 70 cents for every dollar made by men. West Virginia, meanwhile, offers the third-worst gender pay gap plus the lowest median earnings for women: $32,778 per year.
The data
For our rankings, we used data from the 2018 American Community Survey — the most recent year for which data is available.
We compared the median earnings of men and women across all 50 states plus the District of Columbia. This means we only looked at income derived primarily from job wages and salary.
Finally, to determine each state’s progress between 2010 and 2018, we evaluated the difference in percentage points between women’s earnings as a percentage of men’s earnings.
Why is equal pay important for small-business owners?
While pay discrimination has negative consequences for every working woman, the consequences of the gender pay gap hit female entrepreneurs especially hard. Most female small-business owners don’t start their businesses until they’re 45 years old, meaning they’ve likely already received lower pay than their male counterparts for roughly two decades. That limits female entrepreneurs’ access to startup capital.
Less startup capital also affects female entrepreneurs’ ability to secure outside financing for their business. According to a report from the US Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, female business owners account for only 16% of conventional small-business loans — even though women own roughly 30% of all small companies. What’s more, the report found that women account for only 4.4% of the total dollar value of loans for all sources.
Translation: women often start with less money, so fewer women get approved for loans. And the women who do get approved get less funding — all because gender pay disparity is still an ongoing problem.
Education matters
We also did a little research into how gender pay disparity changes with education level. The good news? Women with college degrees do experience less pay discrimination than women with no college education.
The bad news? Once women get a bachelor’s degree, the gender pay gap actually widens — and it gets worse with a professional degree.
In other words, women who haven’t completed high school make only 63.89% as much as men with the same education level. That pay disparity gets better with a high school diploma and peaks for women with an associate’s degree or some college — who make roughly 69.18% as much as men with the same education level.
But once women earn bachelor’s degrees, the pay gap widens to 68.45% compared to men with bachelor’s degrees. And women with professional degrees make only 67.6% as much as men with professional degrees; that’s still a narrower pay gap than women with only a high school diploma, but not by much.
Fortunately, that doesn’t mean higher education doesn’t pay off for women. Women with advanced degrees are able to secure pay increases that bring them a lot closer to the national median earnings benchmark. But even with a professional degree, the median earnings for women still fall short of the national median.
To sum that all up, education does help women earn more money. But even with an advanced degree, women still make less than the national median — and significantly less than men with comparable degrees.
The takeaway
Despite some setbacks along the way, the United States is inching closer to achieving pay equality for women—but we still have a long way to go.
Some areas, like California and Washington, DC, offer women higher-than-average salaries that are more on par with the salaries of men. However, some states (ahem, South Dakota, New Hampshire, Alabama, North Dakota, New Jersey, and Iowa) have actually regressed in the past decade, with higher gender pay disparity today than they had in 2010.
The gender pay gap is also worryingly wider for women with college degrees.
Clearly, there is work to be done. But if our research proves anything, it’s that we’re moving in the right direction.
Sources:
—American Community Survey, “Median Earnings in the Past 12 Months (in 2018 Inflation-Adjusted Dollars) of Workers by Sex and Women’s Earnings as a Percentage of Men’s Earnings by Selected Characteristics.”
—U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, “21st Century Barriers to Women’s Entrepreneurship.”

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Top 10 metros for the smallest gender pay gap
Metro State Female as a % of Rank
Punta Gorda FL 102.7% 1
Hot Springs AR 98.8% 2
Ithaca NY 98.8% 3
Charlottesville VA 98.7% 4
New Bern NC 97.9% 5
Jacksonville NC 97.4% 6
Fayetteville NC 97.1% 7
Hanford-Corcoran CA 96.6% 8
Pueblo CO 96.4% 9
Blacksburg-Christ VA 95.3% 10

Bottom 10 metros with the largest gender pay gap
Metro State Female as a % of Rank
Monroe LA 55.6% 383
Lake Charles LA 57.4% 382
Lewiston ID-WA 61.0% 381
Provo-Orem UT 61.6% 380
Houma-Thibodaux LA 61.8% 379
Lafayette LA 62.4% 378
Longview WA 62.6% 377
Midland TX 63.4% 376
Alexandria LA 63.5% 375
Odessa TX 63.5% 374

State Sen. Bret Allain’s new job as chairman of the Senate Revenue and Fiscal Affairs Committee brought with it jurisdiction over a big pile of state money: the annual capital outlay budget
“I have been inundated with requests from different parts of the state and their needs,” the white-bearded lawmaker told the St. Mary Chamber at a Wednesday breakfast. “I told them I only look like Santa Claus.”
The breakfast at the Petroleum Club of Morgan City gave the lawmakers who represent St. Mary a chance to outline their legislative priorities.
Newly elected state Rep. Vincent St. Blanc, R-Franklin, is preparing for his first session, which opens Monday. St. Blanc hasn’t taken advantage of the opportunity to pre-file bills for the upcoming non-fiscal session.
Instead, he focused on his experience as a businessman, teacher and member of the board that governs Louisiana community colleges and technical colleges. He has seats on the House Education, Commerce and Agriculture committees.
“I know the process …,” St. Blanc told the Chamber members. “Enjoy life, and enjoy Louisiana. Leave the process to me.”
Although changes in the amount of taxes you pay are off limits in this session, Allain, R-Franklin, still has some ideas for changing the taxation system. They include:
—Reducing the Department Revenue’s reliance on the fees and penalties it collects and provide at least some of the department’s funding from the general fund. Allain said the current system gives the impression the department is being too aggressive just to fatten its budget.
—Making a federal income tax filing extension work for state income taxes, too.
—Equalizing the interest rate on funds the taxpayers owe the state and money the state owes taxpayers.
—Providing easier access for taxpayers to the Board of Tax Appeals.
—Creating clear rules for the collection of taxes on internet sales.
Allain said the current system, which relies on self-reporting and the procedures of online sales outlets, puts Louisiana’s brick-and-mortar businesses at a disadvantage.
State Rep. Beryl Amedee, the Gray Republican who represents extreme eastern St. Mary, sent her regrets.

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Submitted Photo
Recently, Bayou Vista Elementary celebrated the 100th day of school. Maria Carmen Izaguirre of Tampico's Restaurant vcame and read to Kayla Perry's PreK class. Izaguirre is 101 years old and will turn 102 on June 28 of this year.