TBLD Director explains planned closure of Diversion Canal Levee Road at Larto meeting
More than 60 people from Catahoula, Rapides and LaSalle parishes filled the gymnasium stands at the former Central High School in Larto last Monday night, August 31, for an information meeting on the Tensas Basin Levee District’s (TBLD) plan to close a stretch of Diversion Canal Levee Road to public travel beginning April 1, 2027.
TBLD Executive Director Brandon Waggoner led the discussion, laying out the legal reasoning behind the closure and fielded questions from residents, camp owners, business owners and landowners who have relied on the road for generations. The closure will affect the section of the levee-top road between Hunt Road and Highway 124 – all in Catahoula Parish.
Waggoner told the crowd the decision comes down to legal exposure and the condition of the levee itself, not a desire to cut the community off.
“The goal is not for everybody to leave here happy with this situation, but to understand where the situation currently stands,” he said. “This is a decision we haven’t taken lightly. We’ve been pondering this for years, talking with different people. We didn’t just suddenly decide to do this, but it’s something that has to be done.”
At the center of the district’s reasoning are two Louisiana Attorney General opinions, one issued in 2016 by then-Attorney General Jeff Landry and another issued in 2026 by current Attorney General Liz Murrill, both concluding that levee districts are not authorized to maintain levee-top roads for public travel except for wear directly tied to levee construction or maintenance.
The 2016 opinion states that a landowner whose property is subject to a levee servitude “may not interfere with or impair the levee board’s maintenance duties,” but also that “the public has no right to use levees as public thoroughfares,” and that a levee district “does not have the ability to compel private property owners to remove or open gates or obstacles” to a public right of way.
The 2026 opinion, requested by TBLD in 2024, found that maintaining a levee-top road as an unrestricted public thoroughfare “exceeds the District’s authority,” though limited public use may be permitted “to the extent that it does not interfere with the preservation or integrity of the levee.”
Waggoner said the district isn’t opposed to the road being used — only to the liability of maintaining it as an open public route without legal authority to do so. “You’ve not heard us say that we’re against growth,” he told the audience. “What you’ve heard us say is we can’t do it” without running afoul of the Attorney General’s guidance. He added that the district would support any other agency with legal authority to maintain sections of the road, and pointed to one stretch the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries already maintains on publicly owned land; the closure applies only where private landownership begins.
Others who are in a legal position to bring the road up to standard and maintain it would be the parish policies juries, Louisiana Department of Transportation and other such government agencies.
The road’s history stretches back to the 1960s, when TBLD began acquiring levee right-of-way from landowners for flood-control purposes. In 1976, the Catahoula and LaSalle parish police juries asked TBLD for permission to use the top of the levee as a public thoroughfare, and the board approved the request unanimously — on the condition that the police juries secure landowner consent, build and maintain the road to public standards, keep vehicles on the road surface, and accept that TBLD could withdraw consent and close the road at any time. The Jonesville-to-Larto levee projects, including the Diversion Canal Levee, were completed in 1978. Even then, TBLD’s own records show the district maintained the road was never built for public access, only tolerated as a convenience.
Records were also produced that showed neither the LaSalle or Catahoula police juries ever followed through with meeting conditions of the proposed “road takeover,” thus, it was never incorporated into either’s road system.
Damage piled up over the following decades. A 1982 traffic surge forced an emergency repair. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers supplied limestone for a full resurfacing between 2013 and 2018, but traffic increased so quickly afterward that when TBLD asked for more aggregate in 2018, the Corps refused, telling the district it would not provide material “while the levee remains open to unrestricted public use” and that neither agency was responsible for maintaining public roadways.
A 2019 state traffic counter found roughly 155 vehicles a day using the road. TBLD requested the Attorney General opinion in 2024 that ultimately set the closure in motion, and the board approved a public meeting schedule and the April 1, 2027, closure date this past August.
Much of Monday’s two-hour session turned into a pointed back-and-forth between Waggoner and residents over access, fairness and money. Several attendees argued that landowners and camp owners in the Larto community have paid property taxes for decades — in some cases close to a century — and shouldn’t lose practical access to their land.
Waggoner didn’t dispute that they still owe, and pay, those taxes, but pushed back on the idea that keeping the road open serves only a handful of people.
“The taxpayers pay for maintenance on all” of the district’s roughly 230 miles of levees, he said, “and most of them don’t have access to this private property.” He added: “When we say ‘select few,’ it sounds good, but that’s not the truth. It’s not the select few. It’s the few that have the property.”
Others raised the economic stakes for the Larto community, arguing that camp owners and landowners there support local businesses and tax bases well beyond the immediate area. Waggoner didn’t dispute the point but said the district’s own tax collections from the Catahoula and LaSalle portions of its service area don’t come close to covering its budget.
“$200,000 is what is collected between Catahoula and LaSalle,” he said. “That doesn’t keep the lights on.”
Waggoner also addressed comparisons residents raised about driving-time alternatives to using the levee road, saying his staff had researched the question using online mapping tools.
“From where we’re actually sitting right now, Larto to Jena is an hour and nine minutes going by the diversion canal, for a total of 45 miles,” he said, adding that the alternate route out to Highway 84 covers roughly 41 miles in a comparable amount of driving time.
“These are all MapQuest — nothing special. Go to MapQuest, that’s where I got it,” he told the crowd, arguing the levee road isn’t the dramatic shortcut some believe it to be. He also noted that Trinity (Medical Center located between Ferriday and Vidalia) has a newer hospital with an emergency room that, in terms of drive time, is not meaningfully farther away than other options residents have used.
Safety concerns came up as well. Waggoner referenced past incidents on the road, including a 14-year-old who died there a few years ago, as part of the district’s broader case that the road was never built to modern public-road standards. At the same time, he sought to reassure residents that the closure isn’t intended to trap anyone in an emergency.
“There’s no interest whatsoever in keeping people who need to evacuate because of some sort of disaster locked down because of this,” he said. “All emergency agencies will have access for emergencies.”
The meeting also touched on politics. At least one resident invoked Gov. Jeff Landry by name, questioning whether the state was looking out for the community’s interests and suggesting the timing of a recent visit to the area by a state official looked suspicious. Waggoner rejected any connection, telling the crowd the process traces back to the Attorney General opinion his agency requested in 2024, well before any recent visit.
He also defended the legal reasoning behind the closure independent of politics. “I don’t hold anything against any politician,” he said. “Whether you vote for the guy or not, you cannot deny that his 2016 opinion was right” — a reference to Landry’s opinion, issued while he was attorney general, which Waggoner said was aimed at protecting property owners’ rights rather than targeting any single levee district.
Asked whether the district would support a future road-raising project to address flooding on the lowest-lying stretches of the Vick Road (an alternate road connecting Larto with Rapides Parish), Waggoner said yes, in concept, noting an Alexandria-based engineering firm has already studied elevating roughly five miles of the Vick Road by about a foot to keep it above adjacent land during high water — an estimated $2.7 million project. He said that decision, and its funding, isn’t the district’s to make but rather the Catahoula Parish Police Jury’s.
Waggoner closed the session by telling residents the district’s position isn’t about opposing the Larto community.
“We’re not for sale,” he said. “I’ve got to sleep with myself at night.”
He said the district would continue holding informational sessions and sharing updates as the April 2027 closure date approaches.
Many at the meeting are hoping their public outrage will reach Baton Rouge and officials there will take steps to ensure the road is brought up to standards and remains open for public use.
