New road & bad ditches

Cecilia – Pat Melancon says he likes the shiny new surface on Roy J. Melancon Road, but now he wants new ditches to go along with it.

Parish Government says get in line.

Melancon, owner of a trailer park in this rural area along La. 31 near Poche Bridge, says the parish has not finished with the improvements made last fall. In fact, he says the project has left the trailer park’s 65 residents with poor drainage.

“I’m glad the road is done,” Melancon said. “But all I ask them to do is clean the ditches.”

Parish Public Works Director Cassie Alexander agrees the ditches need cleaning. He just doesn’t agree with Melancon’s sense of urgency.

“There is no flooding problem in the immediate area,” Alexander says. “We had that all checked out and we put him on a list to get the ditches cleaned out.”

Alexander says areas that flood have the highest priority for parish crews.

“We have 750 miles of road, which gives us 1,500 miles of roadside ditches and his will get done like everybody else’s. Once the request comes in, we set it up to get taken care of. And when his name comes up, that’s where the crew will be.”

Melancon and his wife, Pam, are adamant about getting immediate action. In an area where sewage is treated in septic tanks, it’s a matter of health, they say.

“If you don’t have good drainage, the ditches will back up,” Pat Melancon says. “If the ditches clog up, so will the septic tanks. We’ll have more problems.”

Pam Melancon, a registered nurse, says the Department of Health may have a stake in their situation.

“If that water stays stagnant, it will be a breeding place for mosquitoes,” she said. “That could lead to a lot of health issues.”

Pat Melancon said he has undertaken some of the work himself to clean out some areas with his backhoe and dump truck to fix some of the ditches that eventually drain to the Bayou Teche.

“They know I try to keep everything up to keep the water rolling,” Melancon said. “They knew before they blacktopped the road they were supposed to clean the ditches.”

“He has indicated to us that he could not take care of the ditches and so we told him we would come and we’d clean them and we would try to slope the back side of the ditches to make sure that he could maintain his trailer park,” Alexander says.

“We’ve told him that we’re going to get it done but obviously his time for it to get done is not on the same level as ours.”

Alexander says Melancon’s argument about the septic tanks backing up is specious because the trailer park’s tanks drain into an oxidation pond, not into the ditches.

Drainage, or the lack of it, is frequently a controversial issue within the parish.

In June 2007, the Teche News reported a similar situation that occurred on Main Highway at the southern extreme of St. Martin Parish.

Norris Maturin, a property owner near the St. Martin/Iberia Parish line, spent more than $7,000 to drain water that he says was being diverted to his property by work done by the state Department of Transportation and Development.