Bayou floodgate meeting likely

• By JOHN MCMILLAN
• Advocate River parishes bureau
• Published: Apr 8, 2009 - Page: 1B

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GONZALES — The Ascension Parish president promised a group of environmentalists and ecologists Tuesday he would try to arrange a meeting for them with the president of Iberville Parish to further discuss the opening of the Alligator Bayou floodgate.

The floodgate was opened Sunday on Iberville Parish President Mitch Ourso’s orders and is to stay open unless high water necessitates closing the gate to prevent flooding.

Frank Bonifay, co-owner of Alligator Bayou Tours, has said leaving the gate open would lower the water level in Spanish Lake, thereby killing his business.

Scott Nesbit, president of Natural Resource Professionals, who represents owners of three large tracts of Spanish Lake-area land, said, “They are flooding our property (by keeping the gate closed). You don’t have a right to flood our property so you can float your boat. That’s the issue.”

Ascension Parish President Tommy Martinez told Mary Lee Orr, executive director of the Louisiana Environmental Action Network, he would try to arrange a meeting between the group and Ourso.

The flood control structure is in Iberville Parish, which has ultimate control over whether the device is open or closed, Martinez said.

Ourso said he had been threatened with a lawsuit by three landowners, who maintain their land is being unnecessarily flooded by keeping the floodgate closed.

Besides Orr, those attending the meeting with Martinez were Paul Orr of LEAN; Jeffery Dubinsky, vice chairman of the Greater Baton Rouge Area Sierra Club; Kathy Wascom, legislative liaison for LEAN; and Kathy and Kelly Haggar of Riparian Inc., a wetlands consulting firm.

Haggar told Martinez that keeping the floodgate closed is not the cause of flooding on the three landowners’ property.

Water is blocked from flowing off the land by degraded spoil berms and by not putting culverts under oilfield roads on the property, Haggar said.

“Every problem is on their land and in their control,” Haggar added.

Contacted after the meeting, Nesbit, who represents the three landowners — Lago Espanol, Rivalake LLC and First Louisiana Resources — said Haggar’s statement was “not true.”

The property owned by First Louisiana Resources does have some problems such as Haggar mentioned, but the problems can’t be remedied because of high water standing on the property, Nesbit said.