When Hurricane Gustav cut power to 850,000 Louisiana customers, Entergy had a big job ahead of it. In Ascension Parish, restoring service played out differently on the two sides of the Mississippi River: Most homes and businesses in Gonzales had service restored in days, while customers in Donaldsonville waited weeks to flick the lights back on.
To be fair, parts of Geismar and Prairieville had a delay in getting current flowing, but the trouble in Donaldsonville underscores a divide between the historic parish seat and the fast-growing eastern part of the parish: above-ground power and telephone lines in the underdeveloped, older area versus buried fiberoptics and other cables accompanying new subdivisions and retail clusters along Interstate 10.
More than a year after Gustav, some Donaldsonville businesses and government agencies have generators on hand in case of disaster, but the infrastructure contrast between east and west could be as much of a determinant for growth as it is a daily quality-of-life issue for parish residents.
Of course, the main reason that Ascension’s east bank has seen a business and housing boom is the transportation artery between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. “If we had an interstate, it would be just the opposite,” says Becky Katz, executive director of the Donaldsonville Area Chamber of Commerce. “It’s location, location, location.”
Still, development is trickling along in Donaldsonville. The CVS store on La. Highway 1 will move to an expanded location being built downtown on 10th Street. To the east, where fresh infrastructure is easier to install, a Comfort Inn and Supreme Inn and Suites recently located on La. 70. Not far away, the relatively new retail complex that includes Walmart and Walgreens on La. 70 brings in tax revenue for the parish and the city.
Katz hopes a Nucor Corp. plant for pig-iron production could locate downriver and bring shoppers and possibly new residents to town. She says a couple of spec homes near Prevost Memorial Hospital recently sold, although typically she fields calls for apartment rentals.
Yet Census data shows that although the population jumped in Ascension Parish from about 76,600 to 101,800 from 2000 to 2008, it declined slightly in Donaldsonville from about 7,600 to 7,525 in the same period.
During that time, in the booming eastern part of the parish, Gonzales-based EATEL has been installing underground fiberoptic lines throughout the suburbanized region since 2005.
“Our owners are pretty forward-thinking,” says Brad Supple, director of sales and marketing for the company, regarding what has so far been a $60 million investment. “We were one of the first companies in the country to launch fiber-to-the-home networking. We’re at a 30-megabit download speed [per second].”
That lets the company lead the market in terms of video transmission, he says, compared with other providers that rely on copper lines and, even with DSL, max out at about 6 megabits per second for data transmission close to the signal source, and around 1 megabit per second farther downstream.
He says the company still is building out its service-area network in Ascension and southern Livingston parishes, replacing copper in places with fiberoptics, yet has covered most of the territory. He says perhaps 30% of Ascension still has above-ground communications infrastructure.
He says all the recent home and commercial growth paid off during Gustav thanks to modern-day reliance on underground lines. “Our core network never really went down,” he says. “If you had power, you were able to get cable service, Internet service, phone service.”
Gonzales resident Larry Townsend also praised the subterranean wiring that let his computer network-monitoring business persevere through the storm. His Alaric Corp., based in Prairieville, serves a broad area from Lafayette into Mississippi and has clients throughout Ascension. He described the two sides of the parish as “night and day when it comes to infrastructure.”
“On the west bank, all of their transmission lines were out. Power, telephone, Internet—everything is above ground,” he says. “We had the entire infrastructure taken out of a retail store because the roof blew off, and it flooded. Most of the downtown is old buildings. You can’t dig up trees and churches and houses and put in infrastructure.”
David Herring, Entergy’s customer service manager for Ascension, says developers decide to put wiring underground to make lots more attractive; he says the somewhat newer Crescent Place subdivision is one example in Donaldsonville where infrastructure is out of sight.
At a meeting this month on how to make up a deficit for street lighting in the northwest part of city, parish Councilman Oliver Joseph explained that about 320 out of 720 homes in the lighting district, between Bayou Lafourche and the river, are exempt from the millage that funds the amenity.
Lobbying for a parcel fee to keep the lights on for the next decade—while an innovative plan moves forward to install freestanding solar streetlights—he said the last property assessment put the parish in the hole for its energy bill in that area. One lesson: Growing local revenue means growing incomes, which can boost home prices, encourage residential growth and help fund infrastructure.
Robyn Penn Delaney, a lifelong Donaldsonville resident who runs a local nail salon and cooks up pralines, complained at the meeting that lights along Marchand Drive at the entrance to the downtown have been intermittently out, apparently a technical problem for the city to handle.
“If you want to attract people to the area, you have to put your best foot forward. Why would I want to come to town when I can’t see?” she says. “I’ve seen a lot of people leaving. I love my city, and I want to see it prosper. We want to be self-sufficient. We need more industry and businesses on this side to attract the revenue.”
Ironically, Raymond Aucoin, chairman of the Donaldsonville City Council, says the Marchand lighting glitch is because of an underground wiring fault that could be pricey to repair. He estimated that 90% of wiring across the city is exposed and could be susceptible to storms.
Edward M. Landry, who owns Midway Grocery Co. on Railroad Avenue, recalls how his family-run shop lost power during Gustav and relied on generators—about eight he bought and a more high-powered one from the state—to keep customers supplied with goods while power was out.
Although he doesn’t use the Internet for his business, he certainly needs lights and refrigeration. More customers wouldn’t be bad, either, although he says he’s doing fine, despite discount and drugstore growth that is slowly occurring. “When you cross the river, it’s all grown up,” he says. “You got to bring people from out of town. We need residents. A lot of people have moved to Gonzales.”
The electric hum of economic development is hard to resist.
AT A GLANCE: Ascension Parish
Population [2008] 101,789
Population growth [2007-08] 2.7%
Median household income [2007] $56,720
Persons below poverty [2007] 12.2%
Private nonfarm employment [2006] 29,046
Largest employer BASF Corp. [1,180]
SOURCES: U.S. Census Bureau; Baton Rouge Area Chamber
