METAIRIE, La. — It’s hard to miss.
Banks of the canal that provides drainage for Metairie neighborhoods along West Esplanade Avenue are pockmarked, torn up and washing away.
It is particularly bad between Bonnabel Boulevard and Lake Avenue.
“Every time it rains really hard, it erodes that much more,” neighbor Mack Bennett said.
Bennett and his wife, Glad, have lived across the street from the canal for the past four years.
“My concern is I think it’s going to come up, all the way up, and the road’s going to start disappearing and then it’s going to come across and this house is going to be affected,” Glad Bennett said. “All of the houses around here are going to be affected.”
Jefferson Drainage Director Mitch Theriot said maintaining the parish’s earthen canals is a constant battle.
“Any time, particularly in these last couple of years, when we’ve had a lot of rain fall, just a lot of fluctuations in the rise and fall of the water in the canal, it can slowly start to cause some erosion,” Theriot said
A contractor is now patching sides of the West Metairie Canal.
Theriot said the same fix will soon be used along West Esplanade.
“Typically, it’s a vinyl sheet pile, just above the water line,” Theriot said. “In front of that on the canal side there is a triangular section of rock to help provide some stability there and then behind that is the clay material that will slope up to the top of the bank.”
Theriot added, erosion on the canal bank would have to get a lot worse to jeopardize the integrity of the adjacent roadway.
Still, neighbors are urging the parish to address the problem, sooner than later.
“I think somebody needs to pay attention to it before it’s really too late,” Glad Bennett said.
The parish now has plans to start making repairs to the West Esplanade Canal in late January, early February.
JP spends about $3 million a year fixing drainage canals.
Theriot says that buys the parish about a mile’s worth of repairs.