Deborah Carney
October 20, 2009
Mrs. Leontine (Tina) Harris
October 22, 2009
From the highest point on Isle de Jean Charles, Troy Naquin sits in a folding chair outside the family trailer with coffee and cigarettes in hand, watching the people come and go.
Over the past decade, he’s seen more sport fishermen arriving and more native residents leaving.
Across the Island Road, the only connection to Isle de Jean Charles, Naquin can see his uncle Antoine’s trailer, elevated over 10 feet but still wind-damaged beyond repair from Hurricane Gustav last year.
“He wanted to stay, but that storm made him move to Gibson,” Naquin said.
Soon, the 39-year-old disabled former commercial oysterman and other island inhabitants could have to decide whether to remain or abandon the island en masse.
The island community, once populated with over 300 Native Americans from the Band of the Biloxi-Chitimacha Confederation of Muskogees and United Houma Nation tribes, now numbers 61 adults and 12 children, according to Muskogee chief Albert Naquin.
Last month, Chief Naquin announced a plan to move the remaining island residents to a new proposed development in the St. Agnes Subdivision in Bourg.
The issue has spilt island residents, even within immediate families.
“My choice would be to stay,” Troy Naquin said. “I like it here. It’s quiet. There’s lots of good fishing. It’s a good life.”
But his parents, Tillman and Doris Naquin, both 63 and retired, said they would take the opportunity to go.
“If they allow us to move and give us the funds to move, we’re going,” Doris Naquin said. “If we don’t get out now and the road doesn’t get fixed, somebody’s going to die here because they won’t be able to get out.”
However, Maryline Naquin, 64, who lives with two great-grandchildren and two granddaughters, said moving to Bourg would not solve the residents’ problems.
“It’s a good idea to keep the tribe together, but that place is not better than what we have over here,” she said. “It floods over there when it rains for 20 or 30 minutes. I’d rather stay here.”
Many island residents said the biggest hurdle to more people living on Isle de Jean is Island Road. At certain points, the two-lane road has deteriorated into a one-lane traffic nightmare.
Prior to hurricanes Gustav and Ike last year, the 2.1-mile road was elevated to 4 feet. But the road has sunk by a foot or more in some spots, according to Public Works Director Gregory Bush.
It’s not just storm surges that flood the road, but any southern wind that pushes water from what used to be marshland over it.
When water covers Island Road, residents said they could be cut off from the world for days at a time. That means youngsters missing school and adults missing work and other daily functions.
“Some people believe there’s nothing wrong with the road and they (the parish government) just don’t want to fix it,” said Tillman Naquin. “They’ve been trying to fix (road) that ever since I can remember.”
“We don’t see our families as often because they don’t want to come down with the road in the condition it is in,” Maryline Naquin said. “They need to build it on better ground than where it is right now, or find a way to better protect the sides of the road. That’s all that needs to happen.
“We have to get off to make groceries and doctor’s appointments,” she added. “If it weren’t for that, I’d be happy just staying in the house.”
Parish President Michel Claudet said $700,000 was spent immediately after the storms to restore as much of the shoulder as possible and protect the road from further damage.
But Bush said water is getting under the asphalt and eroding the base of the road.
“When we first measured it, we found damage 3 to 3.5 feet from the edge of the asphalt and 1.5 feet underneath it,” he admitted. “I would say over the last year that has eroded even more.”
The parish hired New Orleans-based Krebs, LaSalle, LeMieux Consultants Inc. to assess the damage and come up with a redesign of the road.
Their estimated cost to repair Island Road to pre-storm condition was over $3 million. To add articulated concrete block revetment on the north side to protect the shoulder would cost over $10.3 million, according to Bush.
“They are currently doing a third option, which would not use the concrete block revetment but would put a curb on both sides of the road to break the velocity of the water and allow the road to drain,” he explained. “I have not received an estimate yet, but I guess it would be about $5.4 million.”
Whether residents prefer to stay or go, both sides remember a time when Isle de Jean Charles was abundant with more than just seafood.
Growing up on the island, Tillman recalled how residents had gardens full of produce such as figs, peaches, grapefruit and oranges.
“If somebody would have told me as a kid how much this land would change, I wouldn’t have believed them,” he said.
Decades of battering from storms and saltwater intrusion depleting the marshes that once buffered the island has shrunken its footprint and killed off vegetation.
“This is more of a disaster place and a survival place than a living place,” Doris Naquin said. “You can look around and see there are no trees growing here. No plants growing. You can’t raise chickens or cattle because they’ll drown.”
Isle de Jean Charles was left out of the Morganza-to-the-Gulf hurricane protection system because a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers cost-benefit analysis found it was too expensive to include the Terrebonne island.
There are two flood levees protecting the island, a 6-foot parish levee east of the island and an 8-foot Terrebonne Levee and Conservation District levee west of the island.
Even though Island Bayou, Lake Felicity, Lake Barre and the encroaching Gulf of Mexico surround the island, Terrebonne Parish Levee Director Reggie Dupre said it would be impossible to raise the levees because there is not enough available land to use.
“To expand these levees would take so much land, there wouldn’t be any houses left,” he insisted. “We’re limited because of logistics and geography.”
“There are no barrier islands anymore,” Naquin said. “If we have another hurricane as severe as Gustav or Ike that would bring the water, I don’t know if there would be anything left.”
Still, some residents feel the island offers more protection from flooding than other lowing-lying areas in southern Terrebonne Parish.
“Pointe-Aux-Chenes was more flooded than the island during (Hurricane) Ike,” Troy Naquin noted. “The water stayed longer over there while the island was dry.”
Chief Naquin first came up with the idea to move residents off of Isle de Jean Charles in 2002 just before the island was devastated by Tropical Storm Bob and Hurricane Lili.
When the Biloxi-Chitimacha Confederation of Muskogees Council met to discuss the idea. However, resistance from other tribal members sank his efforts.
“Most of the people who got up yelling, ‘We ain’t leaving the island,’ they didn’t even live on the island,” claimed Naquin, who himself moved off Isle de Jean Charles in 1975 and lives in Pointe-Aux-Chenes.
The plan was shelved until after the 2008 hurricanes. Naquin said local real estate developer S.P. LaRussa approached him.
“He came to us and said, ‘If you need help, we can help you. I have this piece of property.'”
Although the land in the St. Agnes Subdivision is in a flood plain just like Isle de Jean Charles, the elevation requirement is much less, said Terrebonne Parish Planning and Zoning Director Patrick Gordon.
“The elevation requirements for the Bourg site is 6 feet,” he said. “That’s a big difference from the island, which is 12 and 13 feet.”
Naquin plans to place 60 Louisiana System Built Homes (LASBH) in the development.
The Houma-Terrebonne Regional Planning Commission approved the engineering phase for a 45-acre, 42-lot development. The plan still has to get a final rendering from the planning commission and approval from the Terrebonne Parish Council to maintain the development before it becomes a reality.
Naquin hopes to get $10 million to $12 million in funding from the Louisiana Recovery Authority to construct the development.
“If we get this money, we won’t have to worry about how many want to go or not,” Naquin said. “We’ll put our people in their new houses. The rest can stay on the island and flood.”
Whether the remaining Isle de Jean Charles residents choose to stay or leave is an individual one. They must decide if their way of life can be sustained as Mother Nature continues to pound away at everything they have cultivated.
“If something isn’t done to save this island, pretty soon we will have to move. But now’s not the time,” Maryline Naquin said. “This is where I grew up. This is where a lot of my family is. I want to hold on to this as long as I can.”
“I understand wanting to keep our culture and traditions intact, but you have to move toward the future and what’s best for your family,” Doris Naquin said. “There’s no future here. We’re just survivors. That’s all we are.”
The Naquin family – Tillman, Troy and Doris – have a great view of Isle de Jean Charles from their trailer home on top of a levee 13 feet above sea level. A plan to move the remaining 73 island residents to a Bourg subdivision has split the inhabitants. * Photo by KEYON K. JEFF
