Drug drop boxes newest LPSO addition
June 7, 2016
With this ring, we thee protect: Lafourche system sets local standard
June 7, 2016
Galliano native Howard Billiot is getting older now, which makes it a little harder for him to remember the days of his childhood.
But no matter how fuzzy the distant past may now seem, Billiot, 76, said he remembers taking trips with his dad to this small, quaint fishing community that was loaded with nice, friendly people and beautiful green grass that stretched miles into the horizon.
The town was called Leeville. Billiot remembers the name because he and his cousins used to mistakenly call it “Lee’s Hill” – a sign of how young the youngsters were during the days of these trips.
“It was lovely,” Billiot said. “They had trees. They had grass – lots and lots of grass. I remember sitting out in the shade and eating my lunch while Daddy fished. Those are some of my fondest memories. That was one of my favorite places in the world.”
Flash forward about 65 years into the present and Billiot’s childhood safe haven is now completely engulfed by brackish water. The grass and trees are gone – all that’s left is an occasional stump to show what was once there.
The little houses that once lined the community are gone, too. Some are entirely washed out, but others have pieces of the foundation in tact – enough to remind Billiot and other older Cajuns what used to exist in the coastal town.
Little-known Leeville has seen the worst that coastal erosion has to offer – a once populated town that’s now been just about eaten alive by erosion’s wrath.
The problem is the town doesn’t have a protection system in place to stop storm damages. It’s outside of Lafourche’s ring levee, which begins in south Golden Meadow. It’s also been virtually made obsolete by the new, lifted La. Highway 1 road to Fourchon, which bypasses traffic away from the town and toward the offshore hub.
All that’s left is a broken, battered road and a few businesses – all which are under attack by water, which surrounds the area and creeps closer to the coast every day.
“It’s such a shame,” Billiot said. “I’ve not gone there in a while. I don’t get around well. But even if I did, it’d hurt me to see it. It’s not fun to see the state lose ground. It’s painful. I will die before it gets worse, but my family will be here. It’s painful to know that they can’t see through their eyes what I saw through mine. That stings a little, ‘ya know?”
ORANGE CITY ROOTS GAVE LEEVILE ITS NAME
The story of how the Cajuns got to south Louisiana is too tall a tale for this sitting. But long story made short, the Cajun people were expelled from Nova Scotia, Canada, which caused them to head south.
After being expelled from other places along the way, they ended up in south Louisiana, because, simply, there was no place further south for them to go.
In those days, back in the 1860s and 1870s, many Lafourche Parish citizens lived on the extreme Gulf Coast in Cheniere Caminada – a small community just north of Grand Isle.
After a hurricane in 1893, Cheniere was crushed, which caused people to move up Bayou Lafourche to a town called Orange City – today’s Leeville.
History books depict Orange City as a fertile land for farming with cotton fields, corn stalks and other crops making up the local economy. Over time, Orange City became Leeville – the name the area holds today.
“It was called Orange City because it was fertile land which had many, many orange groves,” reads a photo caption at the South Lafourche Library.
“They grew everything there,” Billiot adds, reliving his youth. “Someone was planting everywhere you looked.”
But several decades later, legislation changed, which started the ball rolling toward Leeville’s demise.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers constructed levees that stopped the Mississippi River from flooding, which halted sediment deposits from coming downstream. Without those sediments, new land wasn’t able to be formed.
The levees (and hurricane surges) also allowed salt water to get into the land mass, which slowly – inch by inch – killed the land’s roots and eroded them into water.
Over about 80 years of this taking place, just about everything was gone. The once fertile land is now all water – the poster child for how unforgiving erosion has been in our state.
“It wasn’t always like this,” fisherman Joe Plaisance said, pointing to the water behind him in Leeville. “This land died recently – in the past 20 or 30 years.”
LACK OF PROTECTION DOESN’T HELP FUTURE
Hop on La. Highway 1 from Leeville and head north and it won’t take much driving to find where the land loss ends and where levee work begins.
Less then 10 miles north of Leeville is Golden Meadow – the last local town protected by Lafourche’s ring levee system.
Golden Meadow’s infrastructure is nothing like Leeville’s, though the two are neighbors on a map.
Where Leeville has been washed away, Golden Meadow is still fully whole – a slow-paced community separated into two distinct land masses by Bayou Lafourche.
Leeville wasn’t included in levee work, because lawmakers said the amount of people who lived in the community didn’t meet the demand nor cost for protection.
South Lafourche Levee District General Manager Windell Curole said without the giant wall, almost all of Lafourche would have suffered Leeville’s fate.
“If we don’t have the levee system, most of South Lafourche looks like Leeville,” Curole said. “If Leeville had a levee system, most of it would look like South Lafourche. That’s the difference. This levee is the difference.”
Serving as the main road connecting the country to Port Fourchon used to be Leeville’s saving grace to get governmental help.
But now even that’s been taken away.
In the past, La. Highway 1 extended from Golden Meadow, into Leeville, then through to Fourchon and down to Grand Isle.
But to curb rising waters, which often flooded the road, lawmakers voted to fund the new, elevated La. Highway 1 Bridge, which bypasses Leeville completely.
The bridge has stopped vehicle traffic through the disappearing town by as much as 50 percent, according to one businessman – another blow in a long line of defeats the town has seen.
“It’s been tough,” angler Mike Collins said. “These people have had to deal with a lot.”
ENJOY IT WHILE IT LASTS
But even with all of the setbacks, the few people who are invested economically into Leeville seem to have the same mantra – they’re going to enjoy it while it lasts.
Collins said he eats often at the Leeville Restaurant, which is one of the most well-known eateries in south Lafourche Parish, offering a variety of Cajun-based treats for folks to enjoy.
“It’s some of the best food you will ever eat in your life,” Collins said. “And that’s still down here. It’s a bit of the calling card for the area now.”
A few years ago, Leeville also got a parish-funded boat launch – the only free boat launch in the area. That, too, was able to get a little momentum for the area.
“These people needed that,” Lafourche councilman Daniel Lorraine said. “It was a shot in the arm. It’ll help the businesses. They needed the help, too. It’s good for everybody.”
How long it’ll last, no one knows.
Everyone around these parts understands that without a levee system, any direct hit from a storm may be the end of Leeville forever – the day that area permanently becomes part of the Gulf of Mexico.
But those within it aren’t ready to let go.
They say that they love this part of the area and are going to be around it for as long as Mother Nature allows.
“I’m not leaving,” Plaisance said. “As long as I can physically come through here, I will.” •
