Bayou Blue could join Lafourche Parish

Several hundred Bayou Blue residents currently living in Terrebonne Parish may soon find themselves living in Lafourche Parish.

The Terrebonne-Lafourche Boundary Committee, at its meeting Thursday night in the Lafourche Parish Council Chambers in Raceland, decided to request that the Louisiana Legislature transfer a swath of Terrebonne Parish land east of Gray in Bayou Blue to Lafourche Parish.

The decision to move the boundary was expected because Committee Co-Chair Mark Atzenhoffer, a Lafourche Parish councilman from Bayou Blue, strongly spoke in favor of the move at a previous committee meeting held in Bayou Blue on June 28.

Also, an informal polling by Atzenhoffer of the people attending the June 28 meeting indicated that nearly all were in favor of changing the border.

Both parish councils have to pass ordinances agreeing to the boundary change, after which the Louisiana Legislature would have to enact a law. Any action by the Legislature cannot happen until 2009.

Official Louisiana State Land Office maps show the land within a line running up to three-tenths of a mile east of the Bayou Blue waterway, and 1 1/2 miles along the bayou near Gray to be a part of Terrebonne Parish.

But Tobin Survey Maps produced in the 1960s, which used land deeds to determine the boundary, show the Bayou Blue waterway to be the border between the two parishes, placing the disputed swath of land in Lafourche Parish.

The Boundary Committee, made up of five Terrebonne Parish council members, four Lafourche Parish councilmen and the two parish presidents, passed a motion Thursday declaring the Bayou Blue waterway, as shown in the Tobin maps, to be the new border. The committee will recommend the boundary change to the two parish councils.

Only one speaker at Thursday’s committee meeting objected to moving the border.

A Lafourche Parish resident who lives in Bayou Blue said, “This wheel is not broken. This is Lafourche Parish, our home base. Who threw the stick in the spokes? This will displace 300 to 400 families.”

Atzenhoffer responded, “The official state map puts you in Terrebonne. It is broken.”

Committee member Teri Cavalier, a Gray-area Terrebonne Parish councilwoman, also pushed strongly for the boundary change.

She said that one woman sought public office in one parish, but was not able to run because the official state map showed her living in the other parish.

“We have proof it is broken,” Cavalier said. “This cannot continue. The growth along Bayou Blue is tremendous. We have to have assurance that you live in that parish.”

Addressing the committee at Thursday’s meeting, South Central Planning and Development Commission CEO Kevin Belanger spoke against the ambiguity arising from the disputed boundary. “You’re headed in the right direction,” he told the committee.

Belanger said that when SCPDC reapportioned council districts in Terrebonne and Lafourche parishes in 2001, the commission based the reapportionment on the State Land Office maps, which are used by the U.S. Department of Justice.

However, during a recent election, the Terrebonne Parish Registrar of Voters recognized the Tobin-map Bayou Blue waterway as the boundary, leaving Terrebonne Parish open to a possible lawsuit.

“The Registrar of Voters made the change without the authority of the U.S. Department of Justice,” he said. “The Registrar of Voters is using the wrong boundary.”

“Presently those who live in the (disputed area of Bayou Blue) are legally obligated to vote in Terrebonne,” he said. “We hope to have them vote in the parish they live in. These meetings hope to correct that.”

Committee Co-Chair Clayton Voisin, who is a Terrebonne Parish councilman, said the two parishes did not know about Terrebonne residents voting in Lafourche Parish in 2001. “Now that we know, we have to fix it,” he said.

At the Bayou Blue committee meeting and at another committee meeting held in Bourg on June 4 to discuss a similar boundary issue in Grand Bois, speakers were concerned about having to send their children to school in another parish if the borders change.

Speaking to the committee, Lafourche Parish School Superintendent Jo Ann Matthews said that Terrebonne and Lafourche have had an agreement that if a student in the disputed areas lives in one parish, they can attend school in the other parish with the permission of both school districts.

For Grand Bois, “Kids going to Terrebonne schools will keep going,” said Lafourche Parish School Board Member Roy Landry.

But students living in the Lafourche Parish part of Grand Bois who attend school in Terrebonne Parish have not been able to compete in varsity high school athletics.

The Boundary Committee approved a measure requesting the two parish councils petition the Louisiana High School Athletic Association to permit the students to participate in athletics.

Toward the end of the meeting, Bourg resident Wallace Ellender, who is a candidate for state representative, pointed out that the proposed land transfers in the disputed areas of Bayou Blue and Grand Bois conveniently balance one another.

“The people in upper Bayou Blue want to be in Lafourche, and the people in Grand Bois want to be in Terrebonne,” he said.

The next Boundary Committee meeting will be held Aug. 9 in the Terrebonne Parish Council Chambers to address the border situation in Grand Bois. Belanger said SCPDC will have maps available of the disputed border area of Grand Bois at the meeting.