What will you do to invest in drainage infrastructure and develop policies and strategies for stormwater management in both the city and parish?

Nancy Marcotte
Candidate for Mayor-President

Drainage remains a serious and significant threat to the people of Lafayette. As Mayor-President, I will work with our regional partners to ensure that a comprehensive, regional master plan is developed. I will work with the Army Corps of Engineers and negotiate a deal with Vermilion Parish to ensure that the Vermilion is dredged. Lastly, I will ensure that lateral drainage systems are cleaned of debris and obstructions.

Josh Guillory
Candidate for Mayor-President

My administration will start by getting our priorities in order within local government. I learned as an officer in the Army that if everything is a priority, nothing is a priority. All departments will be consistently reexamined throughout the budget year for any actual or forecasted surpluses. Any excess money should be considered for drainage, and I will lead the charge in making sure that we spend taxpayer money responsibly on priorities, with drainage being at the top.

Drainage must be addressed with a comprehensive plan. Within our parish, my administration will continue to clean out coulees, ditches, laterals, address litter, and adequately employ detention ponds. However, those efforts are not enough to effectively combat drainage. As Mayor-President, I will work with our neighboring Parish Presidents along with the Army Corps of Engineers to address drainage from a watershed standpoint. Dredging the Vermilion River along with proactively turning off the pumps at the Teche-Vermilion freshwater pumping station in anticipation of heavy storms are also very important initiatives in addressing drainage. Working with our neighboring parishes and municipalities within our parish will be key in accomplishing these efforts.

Carlos Harvin hasn't responded yet! Let the candidate know you'd like to know the answer!

Simone Champagne hasn't responded yet! Let the candidate know you'd like to know the answer!

Carlee Alm-LaBar
Candidate for Mayor-President

I will push forward on a comprehensive approach to mitigating our flood risk. There is not one single solution. We have to take a leadership role in the region to begin to manage risk at the regional watershed level. We have to take advantage of our natural floodways by utilizing them for large detention projects that lower the base flood elevation for an entire section of the parish. We have to maintain channels, coordinating with all municipalities and the parish in a parish-wide system of maintenance. We have to continue the work of the UDC, modernizing our approaches to detention associated with new development. And we have to work with our federal and state officials to tackle larger projects like dredging the Vermilion River.

We have rededicated several million dollars from other uses towards drainage in the last few years. That’s a start. We will also need to put together a cohesive team on a regional level to compete for the tens of millions in state and federal funding that has become available because of recent flood events. But funders at the national level will need to see that Lafayette has developed a comprehensive, well-thought-out, data-driven plan to mitigate flood risk if we hope to maximize that funding.