Terrebonne Parish drainage issues during storms over last 150 years
Clifford Smith and Skippy by Don Davis and Carl Brasseaux, 2009; 4700.2081
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Mississippi River tributaries. USGS.
TEMPESTS:
Storms in the Archives
Clifford Smith: We in Terrebonne, again, it goes back. There was a number of drainage
districts formed. and there were a number of canals dug not only for logging purposes, but primarily
for drainage purposes. There was one what they call the prairie land district drainage district
which was between the Coteau Ridge, Bayou Blue Ridge, and Houma. They dug a canal from Bayou
Terrebonne to Bayou Coteau to Bayou Blue for drainage purposes. That's where US 90 ended up by being
built, right along the spoils from that canal.
We had a great storm in 1856 that affected Terrebonne. There was a 1909 storm that affected
Terrebonne which my father . . . grandfather, and a great uncle drowned in, but my father and
grandfather survived the storm. Then there was a 1926 storm that would affect the Terrebonne. Then
in later years, as far as I'm concerned, Betsy was a major storm. We've had a few others, and that's
another book that I would like somebody to write one day about the storms that drastically affected
Terrebonne Parish.
Interesting, Houma has never flooded from a hurricane because of . . . I consider our buffer was the
wetlands which are gone. Again I think we've lost over 400,000 acres of land between here and the
Gulf of Mexico in Terrebonne Parish within my lifetime. That was our protection and that's gone.
But again, in 1926 there was a hurricane. My father told me about this story that the hurricane
created what we call Wonder Lake which was between Bayou Terrebonne and Bayou Pointe Aux Chenes. The
storm with the tornados or et cetera picked up the marsh and put it in the middle of Bayou
Terrebonne. They had to dredge Bayou Terrebonne out for navigation and drainage purposes. So,
drainage was always a big deal.
Most of our drainage until my lifetime, until my professional lifetime, was gravity drainage. We
never had a drainage problem of influx of water. We always had a gravity drainage problem. Of
course, our drainage system also was drastically affected by the leveeing of the Mississippi and the
Atchafalaya River. We are between the basin of the Mississippi and the Atchafalaya and the Bayou
Lafourche basin to the Gulf of Mexico.Love when the court talks about the basin. I said, "Well,
first off when you talk about the basin, the basin that I live in starts in Minnesota and it comes
all the way to the Gulf of Mexicom hoss! [laughing] Now I got a little basin where I live, but you
want to talk about the basin? It's the big basin, and I'm part of the big basin! So don't do
something in Minnesota and don't think about what the shit you're doing to me in Louisiana." Let me
tell you they don't have a clue. Okay? I've been preaching that for fifty years, and it's like, I
mean, I'd just as soon been talking to the chair.