By CHRISTOPHER LENOIS

GARYVILLE – It had not rained since Easter Sunday. Yet the ditches lining both sides of Little Hope Street in Garyville were brimming with water at the middle of the week.

The rear tire of a St. John the Baptist Parish Water Department vehicle slumped into the muck alongside the Jean Baptiste Grocery Store and Restaurant on the corner of Little Hope Street and River Road. The road’s many potholes were small pools of biological wonder for the residents who take evening strolls through the neighborhood.

“It’s terrible,” Linda Winfield said as she summed up the situation. She has been a resident of Little Hope Street for 39 years. And like her neighbors, she has endured impassable driving conditions, flooded front lawns, and trash strewn roadways for the past 15 years.

But these problems should soon come to an end as the parish was recently cleared to begin repairs with a grant award of $360,500 from the Louisiana Community Development Block Grant program.

Little Hope Street was left in poor condition after a 1987 grant to make sewer improvements in the area called Bourgeois Town fell short. Funds diverted from parish resources could not make up the difference.

“It needed more extensive work to complete a first class road,” said Allen J. St. Pierre, the parish council representative for District 2.

St. Pierre said he, and fellow parish council member, Div. A Rep. Cleveland Farlough, recently accompanied Parish President Nickie Monica and Chief Administrative Officer Chris Guidry to Baton Rouge to receive the grant from State Sen.Louis Lambert and Rep. Bobby Faucheux.

“It’s about time the people in the community are getting the help they deserve,” said Clarence Brown, who has lived in St. John Parish all his life and moved to a resident on Little Hope Street a year ago.

Brown said it only took about three to four inches of rain to prevent residents from getting to work, or backing up the plumbing in people’s homes.

An environmental assessment needs to be completed prior to construction beginning. Which is why the residents will have to wait until August or September before improvements can be made. For Carolyn Jean Baptiste, owner of Jean Baptiste Grocery and Restaurant on the corner of Little Hope and River Road for the past 15 years, it cannot come quickly enough.

“My parking lot’s been flooded with about two feet of water. The road is backed up with paper and cans. I’ve had to close for parts of days before,” she said.

“Next thing we need is speed bumps,” said Brown. “There’s a lot of traffic going through here too fast.”