To watch Lindsey Meaux discuss her story, click here.
Between the traditions of Saturday nights in Tiger Stadium and sunny afternoons sprawled on the grassy Quad lies another tradition only manifested during inclement weather.Trudging through campus and struggling to stay dry becomes necessary when water levels rise and Highland Road begins to resemble a river.As the spring semester ends, the University community is well acquainted with flooded streets, rising water in basements and the loss of flip flops thanks to water in the streets.The rains that bring standing water to campus often flood infrastructure and basements on campus and distribute the University’s litter along a path to the Gulf of Mexico.The intensity of rainfall is indicative of the flooding experienced by the University — there’s a significant difference between 12 inches of rain during a 12-hour period and an inch of rain during a half-hour period. The latter would cause flooding on campus, said Jim Mayne, Facility Services associate director. And when Baton Rouge has already received significant amounts of rainfall, standing storm water on the University doesn’t drain, Mayne said.Terrain flooding occurs in the Hart Lot located near the Student Health Center, on Highland Road and down CEBA Lane, Mayne said.The Hart Lot is at a significantly lower level than the surrounding area. While there are catch basins lining the driveway into the lot, the intense slope causes the water to “sheet” over them, Mayne said. For instance, Mayne said there was about 4 feet of water in the Hart Lot during Hurricane Gustav.Facility Services representatives likened Highland Road to a “river” during times of intense rainfall. As the road has been overlaid numerous times throughout the years, the gutter system lining the road has become increasingly narrow, Mayne said. As for CEBA Lane, Mayne said there’s a specific low spot near the Facility Services building that tends to “back up in a very hard, extreme rain.” Mayne said he once witnessed a car floating in the area.FLOODED FACILITIESAided by a series of mid-summer downpours, drainage problems in Allen, Himes and Hodges halls were among the biggest identified after Bobby Pitre started his job as Facility Services executive director in the summer 2008. The problems in Allen and Hodges halls — both buildings with basements lined by airwells — were fixed with the help of submersible pumps, Pitre said. The submersible pumps, with a design similar to a toilet pump, have attached floats. As the water level surrounding the pump rises, the float rises activating the pump.Submersible pumps of varying sizes are used to remove water throughout the campus.
The cost for purchasing and installing each individual pump varies, but Mayne said the pump itself usually costs about $1,000 while labor for installation usually costs about $1,500. The drainage problems in Himes Hall are not so easily — or cheaply — amendable. The stairs that provide access to Computer-Based Testing in the basement of Himes Hall through the airwell make the building’s problem more complicated, Mayne said.”When they added the computer lab, they added stairwells going down into the airwells,” Mayne said. “And a stairwell, in the case of a rain, becomes a water-fall type system.”Facility Services plans to fix the drainage problems in the airwells surrounding Himes in the summer, Mayne said. Deferred maintenance funding will pay for the project.The University compiles a list each year of necessary projects it doesn’t have funding to complete, and the project necessary to stop flooding in Himes is on this list, Pitre said. The projects are then prioritized by the state. The prioritized projects receive funding as it becomes available.Many of the drainage problems stem from the portion of the campus that lies beneath the ground — the basements.”Any of these buildings in Louisiana with basements, that’s a difficult situation to maintain,” Pitre said. “[Louisiana is] so low compared to sea level. There’s really nowhere for the water to drain … If you get a little plugging in the [drainage line], then those airwells, they act like bath tubs. “COMPLICATIONS FROM LITTERINGWhen heavy rains are forecast in the University area, Facility Services works to ensure the pumps are operable and free of debris, Pitre said. Backup pumps are prepared, and they’re equipped to operate if the University loses power.Ensuring the drains are free from debris — general litter, leaves and tree limbs — is the main action the University can take to prevent flooding, and this action interests landscape architecture professors and students. “When it rains, if [litter is] on the ground, it’s going to go into a drain,” Mayne said. “When it drains, it’s going to go into [the drainage system]. Then it’s going to get caught on a little tree limb. And that’s going to build up another thing and another thing … That’s going to become a damn. Then [they system] backs up, and you’re going to get flooded at your desk.”But litter that falls into drains has bigger consequences than flooding — it also has green consequences, according to Brooke Giraldo, landscape architecture senior and past president of the University’s chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects.”Anything that gets put into the drains that either goes into the [Mississippi River] or to the lakes, it doesn’t get filtered,” Giraldo said. “It’s going into a habitat that you eat from. You dump it, you drink it. You dump it in there, and it goes into our groundwater.”GREEN EFFORTSBesides the storm water that drains, any water that sits on land for extended periods of time, like the storm water that drains over Bayou Duplantier, “goes down and recharges our groundwater,” Giraldo said. “Plants filter some — but not all — of the toxins from the water before it’s absorbed.”Along with the Department of Environmental Quality and the Louisiana chapter of ASLA, Giraldo started a program in spring 2008 to tag drains with medallions denoting the water body each drain siphons into. The program expanded this year to include the drains on campus.A group including Giraldo and volunteers aimed to tag the more than 150 drains throughout campus Saturday. Because the glue supplied for the excursion by DEQ dried, the effort is indefinitely postponed. The majority of the drains downtown have already been tagged. The program, which uses medallions and glue provided by DEQ, is modeled after a similar program in Portland, Ore. Giraldo said she would like to see the program expand throughout the city, including the drains located in gathering areas including the Mall of Louisiana, Perkins Rowe and the levee.  Buck Abbey, landscape architecture professor, said storm water is nature’s way of removing pollutants.”Rainwater is the tool that carries away pollution,” Abbey said. “What ever happens to be downstream, it gets [the pollution]. The water that they drink in New Orleans has been used by seven or eight cities up the river.”—-Contact Lindsey Meaux at [email protected]