RYNELLA — Ray Fremin, Executive Director of the Iberia Parish Levee, Hurricane, and Conservation District, held the third in a series of town hall meetings about a proposed tax millage to fund a levee system across the parish Monday night.

Fremin — along with a group of engineers, real estate assessors, coastal-parish public servants and volunteers from the Acadiana Flood Protection Coalition — have been holding the town halls all over the parish as the vote, on the November 18 ballot, nears. 

Last night’s town hall was held at the Rynella Volunteer Fire Department, on Avery Island Road. In previous weeks, town halls have been held in Delcambre and Coteau.

The IPLHCD was created by a 2010 state house bill “to develop flood protection systems for Iberia Parish” and to “construct and maintain those protection systems,” according to IPLHCD literature. By 2012 they had developed a “conceptual Draft Master Plan,” which has evolved into the current plan Fremin was presenting for community input on Monday night.

As previously reported, the plan consists of 19.2 miles of levee from Vermilion to St. Mary Parish, about four-and-a-half miles south of U.S. 90, 15.4 feet high on the west and 11.3 feet high on the east side. It would include 23 flood control structures, five large pumping stations, two highway gates, a mile-and-a-half of elevated highway and several water retention and detention borrow pits alongside the levee. Fremin said the largest of those water pumps will be able to pump one Olympic-sized swimming pool every 48 seconds.

That plan has a projected price tag of $424 million in construction and another $2 million annually in maintenance over the next 50 years, for a total of $524 million.

The November 18 vote concerns a 5-mill tax the IPLHCD says will cost about $37.50 for homeowners with homes valued at $150,000 or more, and will costs those with homes valued below $75,000 nothing at all. Homeowners between those brackets can expect to pay $12.50 a year. This tax is expected to bring in $2.9 million annually for 30 years. The money will be bonded, leveraged, and matched with state and federal dollars to cover the full cost of the project.

It was a more contentious town hall than previous ones, where most attendees seemed to ultimately support the plan, even if with some reservations. A couple dozen people met in the fire department’s open garage just before 6 p.m., staying to critique or ask questions about the plan as the sky outside went from orange to purple to black.

Several had concerns about the funding.

“The lion’s share of the funds will come from state and federal dollars. Only about 20 percent will be local,” said Fremin. 

Is there any guarantee on receiving the state and federal funds, one man asked (but declined to give his name). “So what if you don’t get federal funding? Or state funding?”

Nothing in life is guaranteed, AFCC volunteers repeatedly stressed, but this was the funding plan followed by other coastal parishes successfully building levee protection systems.

“It’s not that big of an ‘if,’” said Fremin.

“It’s my money — it is a big ‘if,’ the man said.

“One guarantee, if we don’t do anything, is that (flood insurance) is going up,” said Troy Comeaux, an AFCC volunteer. “We will get credits for parts of the plan that are built” on FEMA flood maps, which insurance companies use to set prices, he said. “I don’t hear anybody saying what else we are gonna do. Are we all going to move north of Highway 90?” 

A few other members of the crowd expressed  that they understood the need for a levee but that it was “a burden on them” to pay for it.

“We have a trust problem with the government, I understand that,” Fremin added. “We may never solve that.”