St. Martinville – The St. Martin Parish Council’s Public Works Committee heard updates on the parish’s mosquito abatement efforts with West Nile Virus activity reported in animals in Upper St. Martin Parish this year, and on the effects of sedimentation on the Atchafalaya Basin. Jessie Boudreaux of Cajun Mosquito Control cautioned parish residents to be aware of the mosquito-borne virus that has been detected in the parish. St. Martin Parish has been in a Level 3 West Nile category (on a scale of 1-5), meaning the virus has been detected in the parish but no human cases have been reported. To make sure nobody is infected with the virus, he said people should take precautions to protect themselves.
“Just keep reminding your constituents to remain vigilante,” Boudreaux said. “Make sure you drain any standing water, wear an EPAapproved insect repellent. Avoid peak activity times when you have mosquitos out at dusk and dawn, wear light colored, long-sleeved clothing if tolerable to avoid mosquito bites.”
People age 55 and above are susceptible to becoming more ill from the virus, he added.
Parish President Pete Delcambre said that the parish has kept the mosquito population down most years with spikes coming during hurricane seasons or other times with high waters in the state.
Council
But 2025 is a highly abnormal year with no hurricanes or heavy rains, but the parish has been inundated with West Nile Virus. Adjacent parishes have not had the hot spots that St. Martin has had, he added.
“The good thing is … these pools of concentration of this particular species of mosquito (carrying the virus) normally does not range out of more than a mile radius,” he said. “Therefore they are self contained unless they get on a host and get driven somewhere else.”
A single human case of West Nile raises the category to Level 4, while multiple cases would raise it to Level 5, the highest category.
Parish Council Chairman Chris Tauzin said the parish has been at Level 3 for several years.
Joni Kernan, an entomologist with Cajun Mosquito, said there was a reported human case of the virus in 2003 but the parish has never reached Level 5, and she wants it to stay that way.
Boudreaux said that with people spending time outdoors in the summer and beginning of fall, the parish is taking precautions against the spread of the virus.
Cajun Mosquito uses various traps to capture mosquitos for testing each week in the parish by independent third parties.
“We had to do what we had to do to control the number of mosquitos coming into contact with football practices, football games, parks, wherever you have any type of gatherings of people that are coming into contact with mosquitos at dusk or dawn,” Boudreaux said. “Your joggers, different things like that.”
Screen shots of the test results are sent to the parish administration, which approves spraying for areas where the virus is detected.
Tauzin also reminded residents that St. Martin Parish does not have a mosquito spray program like Iberia Parish does. Iberia voters approved a tax to pay for the parish’s mosquito spray program.
Boudreaux said he and Kernan believe that the infestation started in the Cecilia/Henderson area and travels with birds to other areas. Mosquitos feed on the infected birds in other areas, propagating the spread of the virus.
There have been 35 cases of West Nile Virus in people in Louisiana this year, though no deaths so far and no cases reported in St. Martin Parish.
“We’d like to keep it that way in St. Martin Paris,” Boudreaux said.
To that end, Tauzin said it is actually a good sign for people who notice mosquitos but do not see their neighborhood being sprayed for mosquitos, because that means the virus has not been detected in the area.
Still, the councilman wanted parish residents to take precautions against the virus.
“I just wanted the public to be aware of how the mosquito program works and to let people know that we’re not trying to cause a panic or anything, but we do want to let the public know that we’re at a Level 3 and precautions should be taken,” Tauzin said.
Atchafalaya Basin
Atchafalaya Basinkeeper Operations Manager Kimberly Culotta told the committee that the organization and several others are working to see that the Atchafalaya Basin is cleared of sediments that have filled the upper portion of the basin.
The group has scheduled an Atchafalaya Basin Management Plan Community Meeting meeting at 5:30 p.m. on Oct. 15 at the Catahoula Multipurpose Building on Catahoula Park Road to discuss the group’s basin master plan.
The basin serves as an overflow for the Mississippi River in times of high water, with levee systems designed to protect New Orleans from flooding and spillway locks designed by the Army Corps of Engineers to protect Baton Rouge, the Port of South Louisiana the petrochemical corridor along the Mississippi River and other cities along the river.
“The Morganza Spillway was designed to protect those areas by using the Atchafalaya River and the Atchafalaya Basin, and it’s supposed to hold half of the project flood,” Culotta said. “So that’s a huge amount of water. We know that today the Morganza Spillway cannot move the Project Flood.”
The project design flood is a hypothetical “maximum probable” flood of the Mississippi River used by the United States Army Corps of Engineers to aid in the design and execution of flood protection in the Mississippi Valley, designed in the late 1950s in reaction to the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 that was the largest flood in U.S. history.
Levees 18 miles apart around created the Atchafalaya Basin, but Mississippi River sedimentation has reduced the flood capacity of the basin by half, Culotta said, and that sedimentation continues to increase yearly.
The loss of flood plains that have been converted to farmland following the introduction of the levee system also hurts the flow of water through the Mississippi Delta and its tributaries and distributaries, Culotta said. All of the flood waters that would have overflowed banks in Arkansas, Missouri, Mississippi and upper Louisiana now just raise the level of the Mississippi until it floods areas in South Louisiana.
“That makes all of our communities outside of the basin that much more at risk of Mississippi floods,” she said.
Areas in the northern end of the basin have already filled in at anywhere from 7 feet above the water level to 20 feet above the water level, Culotta said.
Atchafalaya Basinkeeper has proposed a master plan to the state to manage the flooding and the sediment, including sediment traps.
“But it’s really important what we do with that sediment because it really just needs to get out of the basin completely (and not just be put back into the Atchafalaya River),” Culotta said. “We are going to be proposing moving that sediment to the coast where it’s needed (to counteract coastal erosion).”
The state must be convinced that a plan is both effective and cost effective. Atchafalaya Basinkeeper is proposing a long-distance sediment pipeline in the management plan.
“We think it’s worth the investment,” she said. “It’s a one-time investment and it would work for decades and decades. So we need the communities that are most effected by this issue to really speak up and unite, and we wanted to invite you to this community meeting on Oct. 15.”
Parish council members expressed support for Atchafalaya Basinkeeper’s efforts.
Cooperative extension County Agent Steve Gauthier and 4H Agent Erica Poirier of the LSU AgCenter gave a report on the St. Martin Parish Cooperative Extension Service to the Public Works Committee, informing the council members on the agricultural industry in the parish as well as the youth activities students take part in through the 4H program.
Gauthier highlighted the impact of agricultural products on the parish, including a $52 million sugar cane crop, a $5 million rice crop, a $19 million fisheries and wildlife impact. Crawfish ponds raised around $9 million. Horses and cattle and other animals also totaled around $9 million.
The total impact of crops planted in the parish is about $65 million and the total agricultural impact is generally around $100 million in the parish, he said.
The parish also is second in the state in honey production and grows more okra than any other parish, though the acreage is small. The parish is around seventh in sugar cane production in the state. More cane is being grown in the state than ever before, totaling about $1 billion, with the local mill processing sugar from about 10 parishes.
Poirier said the 4H program honored 125 students at its honors night event, and had 350 participants at workshops and achievement days.
Fifty kids from the parish attended 4H summer camp.
