Lower coast gazette., 1909-04-17
SATURDAY APRIL 18th, 1909.

~nAONhn AAAND A'H'
The Good Roads Movement in The Parish Of Plaque
mines.
On Wednesday, April 7, at the meeting of the Police Jury OF
the Parish, a good roads movement was inaugurated that we trust
will go on with increasing force until the Parish of Plaquemines
can hold its head up with any parish Of the state and properly
claim that it is doing for it's roads all that it can properly do, and
is doing also as much as any other parish in the state with the
same resources. The Parish of Plaquemines is practically the
suburban, tropical garden Of New Orleans. We can't get away
from our own homes up into the United States anywhere, without
passing through New Orleans as the gate city which controls us
and our interests are so intimately bound up with the city OF New
Orlea ms that we should carefully arrange for every possible means
OF transportation to and from the great city. When we get up
into the Central West, say at indianapolis, and in a section OF
country apparently no more thickly settled than is ours, we find
hundreds of miles of interurban railroads and hourly trains going
to distant points, making the whole country quickly and easily and
cheaply accessible.
Within two or three decades we shall unquestonably see
hourly trains on each side Of the river, going through the cane and
rice fields and far down in the orange orchards and to our great
oyster fisheries. We now have two railroads giving US reasonably
prompt access to our parish, but we really need more and until we
get relief in some way our parish will remain comparatively terra
incognita to the rest of the world.
A few years back it was the custom of the country to compel
the riparian owners to maintain the public road near the public
levees. At a still earlier date it had been the custom to compel
the riparian owners to maintain the public levees. In fact, the
original concessions or land grants from the government to the
plantation owners were conditioned upon the fact that these
owners should maintain the public levees as far as lay in their
power. This was one of the considerations for which the conces-
sons were made, and sometimes the only consideration. After the
Civil War, levee districts were formed and the state and district
authorities took over the construction of the public levees, leaving
their maintenance and repair to the riparian proprieors, under the
direction of the police juries. The police jures have never been
deprived of this power, ever since the general change in our levee
system, but as our present levee boards have the power of taxation
and thus securing funds for the construction, repair and mainten-
ance Of the public levees, the police juries do not take any hand in
their maintenance, as they would have the right to do if any dan.
ger was threatening. Until the present control of public levees
was inaugurated the control Yves found to be very imperfect.
Every planter with great familiarity with his own levee and conf
dent in his ability to take care of it, would gradually be led to be-
leve in it's entire safety, when all the rest of the world would ar.
rive at different conclusions. This over confidence led to many
disasters. When the work was transferred to the regular levee
boards, then the owners of the land and the residents on the land
themselves became the severest critics and requested the rapid and
general improvement in the levees, in order to insure their own
safety, as well as the safety of the public in general.
This advance in the levee system led to the constitutional con-
vention OF 1898, to authorize the police juries Of the various
parishes Of the state to levy a per capita tax and a vehicle tax on
all able bodied men between the ages of 18 and IS years for the
Improvement Of the public roads. This tax has been levied by
some Of the parishes and has been disregarded by others, which
retain their ou systems, or, we may say, do without any road i'm
provenent whatever, or occasionally get some limited amount of
work done by the PARISH authorities out of cash on hand, COL
lected probably on a budget that did not contemplate any road
work. Some of the parishes Of our state levied a special tax in
which the majority OF the taxpayers in number and in dollars
agreed to a specified special tax for a certain number of
years. Our own parish has been levying the per capita tax and
the vehicle tax, but has been rather chary about enforcing it,
although under our constitution the tax can be readily collected by
criminal process, # it be not promptly paid. The tax is so small,
one dollar per capita per anLum, that it ought to be paid promptly
and if the leading men of each ward of the parish would aid the
assessor and sheriff in the matter Of the collection of these taxes
as far as lay in their power there is no reason in the world why
the parish should not realize from the tax some $2OO. If such an
amount were collected this, supplemented by whatever the parish
may find itself able to give out of the common fund, would be
sufficient to inaugurate the matter of general road improvement
and perfect our connection with the city of New Orleans.
On the West bank Of the river the railroad cut off now in use
is said to be five miles from river to river and some three miles
from high land to high land. The ease with which the road bed
was thrown up on which to build the Grand Island road under
Gov. Warnoths administration suggests that that cut off road, or
the old cut off road should include a new Macadamized road, COM
petent for all ordinary traffic and especially competent for the use
Of automobiles, which would lead many visitors to take a quick run
down the river at any time of the day they might choose to look at
our orange country in the lower parts of the parish. On the East
bank of the river the ~enterprsing parish of St. Bernard will soon
have its shell road completed as far as the parish line or at least
as far as the Terre aux Boufs road, which would leave only about
thirty miles Of road on this side of the river to be put in good
order to perfect a first class route from New Orleans to Pointe-a-
la-Hache. The Police Jury at its recent meeting seemed deter
mined to take a broad view of the road question and for certain
wards Of the parish where considerable distances Of unmade roads
exist, appropriations were made that will be competent to open the
reads and at least put them in reasonably good order. Commit