Teche-Vermilion Flood Team Meeting 6/14/2021 Minutes and Situation Analysis

Jun 14, 2021 | Uncategorized

6/14/2021 8:30AM

Role Call X Attending

X Harold Taylor St Landry Parish

X Ricky Broussard St Landry Parish

X Warren Byrd RRABB Levee Board

Donald Segura TVFD

X Russell Beauvais USACE

Sherbin Colette St Martin Parish

X Dave Dixon Lafayette Parish

X Harold Schoeffler Lafayette Parish

X Jamie Angelle Lafayette Parish

X Brian Smith Lafayette Parish

X David Cheramie BVD

Ed Roy Meteorologist

Current State N to S

RRABB has gate cracked trickling water down to Bayou Boeuf but RRABB could potentially close as the Red River levels have just fallen allowing drainage to the Red River.

USACE started closing the Courtableau gates back on June 10th closing the gates from 15’ to 10’ and following that on June 12 closing gates from 10’ to 6’  and today closing gates from 6’ to 4’.

Dave reported a summary  levels in the watershed and a local landowner said the Henderson Lake Gates were open at last inspection.

Last TVFD report Sunday showed pumps not running and Loreauville Control Structure open draining Bayou Teche to Lake Fausse Pointe.

Discussion

A discussion regarding floodway side levels vs land side levels with a head of approximately 1.6’. Russell advised that floodside was dropping very, very slow when gates were open fully.

A discussion about the current levels of the Vermilion being so high that if we get a large rain event it threatens both Lafayette Parish and the St Martin Parish  Cypress Island Community.

Tides have been trending down allowing good drainage to the Gulf.

Dave reported Courtableau was dropping 0.5ft per ~40 hours when gates were open 15’  or 80 hours per ft of drop.  For landside to drop 2 ft would take about 160 hours or 6 days and 16 hours. This assumes floodway side levels also decline and no significant rain happens before tropical system affects the area.

The Vermilion River at Surrey levels was 9.47’ declining about 0.5 ft/day. At that rate to get down to a normal 5.5-6’ level would take 7-8 days.

Action

We asked Russell if the Courtableau Gates could be opened back to 15’ resuming the decline on the land side to a targeted minimum of 15.6’ before arrival of storm. Russell replied that he would check and advise on this request.

Update 6/14 1:30 PM

USACE has opened Courtableau and Darbonne gates wide open. Levels are falling good.

National Hurricane Center upped the probability to 70% and aiming it at our watershed

𝐀𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐃𝐫𝐞𝐝𝐠𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐕𝐞𝐫𝐦𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐨𝐧
Dredge the Vermilion (DTV) is a non-profit setup to inform the public about the need to identify and to perform regional drainage projects in the Teche-Vermilion watershed.
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