New flood plan offers hope to Amite River Basin residents

Guest column: New Amite River plan offers hope to locals | Guest Columns | nola.com 

Guest Column by John Clark

Almost everyone in the Capital Region remembers the floods of August 2016. They inundated tens of thousands of homes and cost 13 precious lives. The trauma still lingers in the hardest-hit communities.

Even if you escaped the floodwaters, you felt their impact. Businesses closed. Schools doubled up or shut down. Public services were interrupted. Maybe you helped a neighbor carry a lifetime of cherished keepsakes to the street — for the garbage dump.

Not a single parish in the Amite River Basin — Ascension, East Baton Rouge, East Feliciana, Iberville, Livingston, St. Helena or St. James — was spared. The basin is no stranger to riverine, coastal, backwater or flash flooding. In 2016, we saw all of it. The system overloaded. The Comite River, Bayou Manchac, Ward Creek, Blind River and many others surged beyond capacity.

No one can truly prepare for a 1,000-year flood, but 2016 showed us again the force and persistence of water in our basin. It is part of a list of devastating events -- the floods of 1977 and 1983, Tropical Storm Allison in 2001, the March (and August) 2016 flood and the “rain bomb” of 2021, that we’ll never forget.

More importantly, it underscored the growing frustration of citizens demanding action. In 2022, the Legislature restructured the Amite River Basin Commission, giving it a sharper, more urgent mission to reduce flood risk.

And we are acting. Together with our seven member parishes and professional experts, we are advancing more than $100 million in transformative projects: Clearing sediment from the Lower Amite, improving drainage in Bayou Manchac, installing pump stations to move floodwaters into the Mississippi River in Ascension Parish and bolstering protections for vulnerable communities in St. James Parish.

At the same time, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is nearing completion of $1.2 billion in construction on the Comite River Diversion Canal and the “Five Bayous” Project in East Baton Rouge Parish — both expected to finish after 2028.

The Legislature also tasked us with developing the first Amite River Basin Master Plan for comprehensive drainage, flood risk reduction and water management across the basin. In short: to fix the problem.

The newly completed plan, available on the Amite River Basin Commission's website, identifies how we can revise FEMA’s flood maps to remove thousands of homes from designated flood zones, lowering insurance costs for families. It also provides tools to help communities design smarter drainage systems, aid emergency managers during storms and help residents understand and manage their risk.

The plan shows that by stopping excess water from entering the Amite River system — and improving how the system drains — we can significantly reduce future flood losses. When we do nothing, those losses now average $210 million annually. Left unchecked, they’ll climb to $550 million a year by 2050. A fully implemented Amite River Basin Master Plan can cut that risk in half.

This plan represents a new chapter of regional cooperation among the seven parishes in this basin, working together as one to protect what matters. It’s not perfect. It will evolve. But one thing is certain: There is no alternative.

We must act.