Ten years ago this week, rain fell across south h for four days, with some areas receiving as much as 28 inches. Rivers and drainage systems were overwhelmed, sending floodwater into nearly 2,000 homes in Lafayette Parish.
The Vermilion River at Surrey Street crested at 17.62 feet on Aug. 15, well above its 10-foot minor flood stage.
“The rain fell like somebody turned on a faucet and walked away,” Lafayette Mayor-President Monique Boulet said.
The August 2016 flood became one of the costliest natural disasters in Louisian history and displaced thousands of residents across Acadiana.
Meteorologists have described it as a 500-year event, while some hydrologists have classified parts of it as a 1,000-year flood. Neither term means another flood of that magnitude can't happen again anytime soon.
For some, the water receded within hours. Others had to deal with it sitting in their homes for days, even weeks.
Some homes had just a few inches of water. Others ended up with a foot or more, trapping residents in their subdivisions.
Once the water receded, houses were emptied. Residents salvaged what they could. Wet furniture and belongings, drywall and cabinets, baseboards and flooring, toilets and bathtubs were removed, dumped on front lawns, mountains of damp debris.
With hundreds, even thousands of people vying for contractors, drywall installers, cabinets and flooring, recovery was a slow process. For many, it took six months or more to return to a livable home.
Ten years later, the fear remains
In the decade since the flood, Lafayette Parish has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on drainage improvements, built detention ponds, cleaned coulees and overhauled emergency response. Yet many residents say the fear never left.
“I sometimes get maybe a little PTSD due to my flooding of 2016,” Molly Maguire said. “If the rains are heavy for several days and water collects in the roadway, I get apprehensive.”
Like so many others, Maguire’s home had never flooded before 2016. She lives in a rural area between Youngsville, Milton and Abbeville, an area where her family has lived for more than 80 years without flooding.
Sugar cane fields still surround her home, Maguire said, but many other acres of farmland around Youngsville have been paved and turned into residential subdivisions.
“We don’t have any idea how that development has affected drainage out here,” she said.
The city of Youngsville was one of the worst hit areas in Lafayette Parish. Around 300 homes in the Highland Ridge subdivision flooded, Youngsville Mayor Ken Ritter said.
Youngsville moved quickly after the flood, accelerating a drainage master plan that already identified about $8 million in needed improvements, Ritter said.
Because the plan was in place, the city aggressively sought and received federal funds, 30% of $25 million in hazard mitigation grant funding allocated to the Acadiana Planning Commission, Ritter said.
The $7.5 million was used to build seven detention ponds on two of the three major drainage channels in the community.
The detention ponds temporarily store stormwater until it can safely flow into the Vermilion River, improving drainage in subdivisions built before 2016, Ritter said. Developments since the 2016 flood, he said, are required to include detention for a 25-year storm and homes have to be built higher.
The city also started cleaning channels, coulees and other drainage, despite warnings that it would do no good unless the Vermilion River and channels south of Youngsville were cleaned, Ritter said.
“We’re still working aggressively on maintaining drainage channels,” Ritter said on Friday, a few hours before learning he was reelected once again without opposition.
One project expected to be completed within the next few months is the reconstruction of South Larriviere Road, the main route to Southside High School. It also runs near Highland Ridge. The road is being elevated and widened and the culvert underneath it will be bigger, Ritter said. South Larriviere Road is part of a FEMA floodway, so water overtakes the road even in small rain events.
‘We can be more efficient’
Much of that work has come in response to lessons learned from the 2016 flood.
Millions in tax dollars have been spent on projects to improve drainage and reduce flooding in Lafayette Parish.
Joel Robideaux, who was mayor-president at the time, said some coulees and drainage channels hadn’t been cleaned or maintained in years, so that was one of the first priorities.
Lafayette Parish has more than 600 miles of coulees and drainage ditches. A parishwide property tax for drainage generates $7.5 million a year, Robideaux said a year after the flood. Around $20 million was needed, he said, just to address the 63 miles of drainage canals and ditches identified as priorities.
In 2017, Robideaux transferred to drainage maintenance $9 million of a surplus in the fund for public health, mosquito control and animal control. He pushed and voters approved reallocating 1.1 mils of that property tax permanently to drainage, generating about $2.5 million a year more for drainage.
In late 2019, at Robideaux’s pushing, voters agreed to use $8 million from the Lafayette Public Library System’s reserves for capital projects on drainage.
Josh Guillory, sworn in as mayor-president in January of 2020, took an aggressive approach to Lafayette’s flooding problems.
In May 2021, another deluge in just a few hours caused severe flash flooding, pushed the Vermilion River to 15.25 feet and once again threatened homes. In response, the Lafayette City Council approved a $20 million emergency appropriation to accelerate drainage projects.
The emergency declaration, Guillory said at the time, allowed officials to bypass public bid law in some instances.
Guillory's drainage efforts later became the subject of criminal charges alleging violations of public bid law and improper property acquisition. He has pleaded not guilty.
Guillory was defeated by Monique Boulet, who took office in January of 2024. One of her priorities was resolving lawsuits filed under the Guillory administration and completing unfinished drainage projects.
The Guillory administration spent more than $100 million on detention ponds at Homewood Drive and Ile des Cannes. Boulet said last week that the Ile des Cannes project is fully functioning and “shows promise.”
The Homewood project, she said, has “a smaller projected impact. Almost minor.” It isn’t finished yet.
Even with all the improvements and investments, Boulet said no amount of drainage work can eliminate the risk posed by a storm like the one that struck in August 2016.
“We can be more efficient. We can be proactive,” she said. “We can really make strategic investments along the way where we have issues.”
Maguire said she closely watches the Vermilion River every time it rains heavily because she believes development in the southern part of the parish has slowed drainage when the river rises.
To Maguire, the area has become “a giant toilet bowl no one can flush. We don’t know when or where the toilet bowl will overflow.”