Editor and Publisher

RESERVE – One Reserve couple had more than the usual hit of Hurricane Gustav on Monday at their St. John Parish home, as they had to endure raw sewage being pumped into their front yard by parish workers trying to repair a burned up pump station motor.

Karen Scioneaux, who has lived in the Reserve area for 40 years, said she was shocked late Monday night—only hours after Gustav passed through the region—when she saw parish workers beginning to clean out a sewage substation by pumping the raw sewage into her front yard. “I really couldn’t believe what was happening,” she said. “They had all day to get the generator going to keep the station from overflowing, and even though we kept calling to tell them to turn on the generator, they never did do that.”

St. John Parish President Bill Hubbard confirmed that the workers did, in fact, pump the sewage into the front yard of Scioneaux and her husband. He said the reason was that the workers were suddenly faced with trying to empty out the overflowing substation, which was not working due to a burned up motor.

“Yes, I’m aware of what happened,” Hubbard said. “I know that they did that, and that is certainly not what we normally ever want to do. But in this case we were faced with an emergency situation that would affect thousands of people if we didn’t get the station emptied out, and the only route to a drainage line for the sewage was to go through their front yard.”

Scioneaux lives right across the street from the substation, which has had its share of problems for years. For that matter, it was Hubbard who only months ago insisted that the Parish Council pass an emergency order to buy new pumps for the station. People who lived in that area on Za Montz Road have for years endured backing up sewer lines when there are heavy rains.

But the new pumps are still about 30 days from arriving here and getting installed, and in the meantime, the existing pump burned up, Hubbard said.

“For us to access the burned up motor so we could fix the one in there, we had to pump the station out, and the only place to put the sewage was in the drains through her yard,” Hubbard explained. “The pump is now fixed, and we had to make a decision to inconvenience one person, or inconvenience thousands. And in this case, we had to consider the majority of people.”

Scioneaux said that her family, and others in the neighborhood, have been more than aware of the problems with that substation.

“We even saw the parish put a generator out there before the storm to be ready to run the pump,” she said. “So we knew they were at least trying to be ready to make sure the station work. But then we never saw them come out to turn the generator on, all up to the time the storm started to hit, and even all day Monday.”

While Scioneaux and her relatives couldn’t understand why parish workers didn’t turn on the generator, Hubbard explained that it was because the pump motor had burned up and wouldn’t have run anyway, which is why the generator was never started.

By 8 p.m. on Monday night, Scioneaux saw the parish workers show up, but then was shocked to see them start cleaning the station out by pumping sewage into her yard.

“This is a health hazard for the neighborhood, not to mention the way the yard smells now every time it rains,” she said.

Parish workers did come out and try to improve the situation by spreading chemicals in the yard to absorb the sewage, but Scioneaux said it hasn’t helped.

“Nothing helps take that smell away,” she remarked. “We just think they should have had a better way to do that, like have A3M bring over a pump truck to remove the sewage. They are just trying to get around the whole wrong thing they did by saying the pump burned up. “

Hubbard said he expects the new pumps for that region to arrive soon, and construction to replace them to start in about 30 days.