It has been more than two weeks since the Commissioners Court held two workshops to discuss drainage issues with citizens throughout the county. The Orange County Drainage, the county’s Road and Bridge Department, Texas Parks and Wildlife, TxDOT and all the municipalities in the county participated.
Since then work has been done to fix some of the problems that were identified by the citizens’ comments. County Commissioner Johnny Trahan from Precinct One said the heavy rains over the first week of July also helped point out problem areas as far as drainage.
Trahan insists that the county and the Drainage District have found some issues and are working to address them. “Hopefully, we can make the drainage in that area a little bit better,” Trahan promised.
Woodshire Manor was having trouble getting water to drain across Highway 87. The Drainage District is spraying a neighboring ditch to get some of the grass out of it.
The residential addition across from the Little Cypress-Mauriceville High School had much standing water in it. The drainage ditch paralleling Highway 87 has a lot of dead grass in it between the church and the neighborhood which they will mop out. In another area along the highway a piece of culvert had broken off and was blocking 75 percent of the drainage.
Precinct Three which is in the southern part of Orange County is much like the end of a funnel in that almost everything in the county drains to there. The water is supposed to drain to the marshes and Lake Sabine to the south of the county, but the canals draining to there have sometimes acted like a clog in the funnel.
The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department oversees the marshes and has been working to clear silt left there by previous storms. Precinct Three County Commissioner John Gothia informed that the county is working with the Drainage District to help Parks and Wildlife with the drainage going to the marshes.
The Drainage District and the county are drawing up a plan to present to Parks and Wildlife on potential solutions to the problem. They will also be meeting to discuss a potential retention pond for that area.
There are still some big issues Gothia admits. He points out the Drainage District and the county’s Road and Bridge Department have been working to fix many of the smaller items that were mentioned in the workshops.
The Bessie Heights ditch and the Susan Circle ditch have been mowed. Obstructions have been found in them and cleaned out. The commissioner hopes to see some improvement from that alone.
The bigger project Gothia admits is clearing out the ditches to the marsh area. “That’s a process we’ve got to work through with the Corps of Engineers and Parks and Wildlife and they’re working with us on doing that,” Gothia concluded.
-Dan Perrine, KOGT-
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