ST. MARTIN PARISH — A year after launching a multi-million-dollar effort to overhaul its aging sewer system, the City of St. Martinville continues to make progress on infrastructure upgrades aimed at reducing backups and improving drainage across the city.
“We have, I'm gonna call it all things water—sewer, drinking water and drainage projects all in the mix currently going on,” said Pamela Granger, principal engineer with McBade and Associates, the firm overseeing the project.
Granger walked through completed and ongoing work, highlighting areas where crews have already made repairs and where construction is still underway. Early phases of the project included extensive smoke testing to identify problem areas within the system, followed by targeted repairs to address leaks and infiltration.
“They should be noticing more reliable sewer, less sewer backups, less issues with the sewer,” Granger said.
That progress is also reflected in the city’s latest water quality reporting, which came in at a score of 31 out of 560—where a lower score indicates better performance—marking a 49-point improvement from the previous year.
“That is indicative of the things that have already been done, the pump stations we’ve already completed, and the sewer rehab work that we’ve already completed and we showed that the Sewer system has drastically improved,” Granger said.
Work continues on several major components of the project, including the extension of sewer lines along Main Street, which is approximately 60 percent complete.
Looking ahead, another phase of the project focuses on raising levees around the city’s wastewater treatment ponds. The effort, funded through the Louisiana Watershed Initiative, aims to better protect critical infrastructure from flooding and prevent outside water from entering the system.
“By raising the levee, we will now contain any of the sewer water within those ponds—and keep other water from going in, but also keep water from coming out,” Granger explained.
In addition to those upgrades, the city is working to install new isolation valves, which are expected to reduce the need for widespread water shutoffs during repairs and help limit boil advisories.
“Getting new isolation valves, which should help in the future for the system to be isolated for water leaks instead of the entire system having to be turned off,” Granger said.
Granger said the work remains focused on improving overall system performance, with additional pump station upgrades still underway as part of the broader, multi-phase project; with two of the five pump stations already rehabilitated, the remaining three are expected to be completed by early October.
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