Alligator Bayou swamp concerns float back into view with rain

Draining the Spanish Lake Basin has left Alligator Bayou Tours high and dry since the spring, but recent rainfall has returned the water level of Alligator Bayou to about 9 feet, says tour company co-owner Frank Bonifay. That’s even though the bayou was emptied to protect lowlands in the area used in mitigation banks. Bonifay, who says his company is out of business and looking to sell its assets, says Iberville Parish officials left open a floodgate that controls the basin’s water level too long, resulting in excess water from East Baton Rouge Parish draining to Ascension Parish. Tommy Martinez, parish president for Ascension, says the lock in question in Iberville Parish is going to be monitored by someone from his staff who lives nearby once an agreement is signed early next month. Martinez says the lock in question was left open “maybe five or six hours” too long during the last heavy rain but described the overall three-parish watershed problem as a natural part of winter swamp ecology, where St. Gabriel-area water flows to the basin and the bayou, and East Baton Rouge water flows to Bayou Fountain and Ward Creek, to Bayou Manchac and the Amite River. When the river is high, water backs up. Martinez says he thinks the inch or so of rain predicted to fall through Thursday won’t require closing the now-open floodgate again. Bonifay’s long-term concern, however, is that “the bayou had been so altered by the draining over the summer that capacity to hold water has been diminished by siltation and vegetation growth.” For a Business Report cover story about the Alligator Bayou dispute, click here.