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10 years after 2016 flood, EBR leaders face funding constraints while trying to prevent future floods
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BATON ROUGE — Ten years after record flooding swamped neighborhoods across East Baton Rouge and Livingston parishes, residents and officials are reflecting on what went wrong and what has changed since.
The Amite River reached a record crest of more than 46 feet in Denham Springs in August 2016, sending flood waters into neighborhoods across both Livingston and East Baton Rouge parishes.
Beth Hill, who was pregnant at the time, left her Livingston Parish home headed for work in Baton Rouge one day in August 2016.
"We had just finished working on the nursery. I called my boss and said, 'Hey, the roads are kind of flooded. But I'm going to try to get there,'" Hill said.
She never made it. Hill was forced to leave her car at a truck stop near the Magnolia Bridge on Highway 64 as water rose around her just off the banks of the Amite River.
"Then, I got a text from my Cajun Navy friend, and he said, 'Hey, look. Didn't you say you parked your car at Frog's?' And I got a picture where people were on top of their car, and people were waiting to be rescued by boat," said Hill.
One of the hardest hit areas was Sherwood Forest Oaks, just off Millerville Road and Old Hammond Highway in East Baton Rouge Parish. Cathy Cooper moved into the neighborhood after the 2016 flood but experienced another similar event during Hurricane Ida in 2021.
"We had four feet of water in the home. The Cajun Navy and the fire department came and got us out of there. I had two dogs here and my granddaughter, who just took her first steps that night, and I had to put my grandbaby out the window," Cooper said.
After that, Cooper and more than a dozen people in her neighborhood received FEMA flood mitigation assistance funds to raise their homes nearly seven feet off the ground.
Cooper and Ragean Nguyen, who live down the road, both had their homes lifted. For Nguyen, the height means more than just protecting belongings.
"It just means that all of our belongings, like anything that's important to us, is kept inside the house and we won't lose to anything other than like, just a simple vehicle, because lives are more important than materialistic things," Nguyen said.
East Baton Rouge City-Parish Transportation and Drainage Director Fred Raiford said the rain was not the only problem in 2016. Blocked drainage systems also played a role.
"There was more backup than the actual heavy rainfall event. Some areas had probably close to 50 percent blockage and that's not a good situation to be in," Raiford said.
Since then, East Baton Rouge has built a closer working relationship with Livingston and Ascension parishes' public works departments, so crews from all three parishes work together to clear debris from storm drains and shared waterways.
"I would just say, working with the parishes has been essential. Water knows no political boundary," Raiford said.
Raiford says millions of local, state and federal dollars have been spent clearing waterways, repairing drainage structures and removing debris from storm drain pipes. New road work in the area is also designed to move water away from homes in future storms.
The 2016 flood also pushed the city-parish to create its first stormwater master plan, a long-term guide for construction projects aimed at reducing flood risk. But Raiford says there is not enough money to fund everything the plan calls for.
"We had $2 billion worth of work. We don't have any money to build right now," Raiford said.
Some projects remain incomplete or have not started, including planned improvements to Ward's Creek near Siegen Lane, which are still waiting on federal funding and approval.
Raiford acknowledges that even with the improvements made so far, another large storm could still overwhelm the system.
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