BELLE ROSE, La. (AP) - Nearly three months after floodwaters caused vaults to break apart and set two caskets adrift at a small cemetery, a project is underway to try to make sure that kind of flooding never happens again.
Assumption Parish Police Juror Henry Dupre is spearheading a project to try to stop future flooding at the Rose Hill St. James Cemetery. He tells The Advocate (https://bit.ly/1kW9lH0 ) no one should have to bury someone twice.
The cemetery, which belongs to two congregations, Belle Rose Baptist Church and St. James United Methodist Church, is in a low-lying area on La. 998, a narrow two-lane road off La. 1 in Belle Rose.
Farmland surrounding the cemetery drains into it even during moderate rain showers, say those who live in the Belle Rose community.
But when 10 inches of rain fell within a span of several hours on May 29, the cemetery was under water. A nearby, unused and elevated railroad track that’s several feet higher than the cemetery served as a wall, keeping the water in the graveyard.
“It was solid. It was a lake,” Dupre said of the water. “Let’s hope it was a freak of nature.”
With the help of the Union Pacific railroad, the Police Jury this summer removed about 20 feet of the unused rail line that runs north and south next to the cemetery, clearing the way for a drainage canal that will run east and west behind the cemetery.
It’s expected the new canal will divert runoff from more than 100 acres of farmland north of the cemetery, away from a 60-inch culvert near the cemetery, to another canal, Dupre said.
Then, through various waterways, rainwater ultimately will end up in Lake Verret near Pierre Part in Assumption Parish.
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Information from: The Advocate, https://theadvocate.com
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