VIDALIA — Hurricane season is here, and Concordia Parish’s farm community is hoping it won’t be a repeat of last year.

The 2008 harvest was delivered a sucker-punch by Hurricane Gustav when the storm brought more approximately 20-inches of rain to the area.

That rain didn’t drain in the southern end of the parish, and very quickly rose to the point of covering much of the parish’s row crops with water, ruining them and taking a year’s worth of crop input away with the receding water line.

“If it happened again, it would bankrupt a lot of farmers,” Parish Extension Service Director Glen Daniels said. “The bank is holding that (crop) note over from last year, and they’re only going to hold so much debt.”

The problem lies with the parish’s main drainage artery, Cocodrie Bayou, which has, in recent years, become clogged with debris such as logs and other organic matter.

Police Jury President Melvin Ferrington said that because of the problem with the drainage, the water doesn’t get to the pumping stations in the south of the parish quickly enough to be removed.

“Cocodrie Bayou is our only source of drainage,” he said. “Without the water getting to the pumps, if we get the big rains we could possibly get during severe weather we are still going to be in the same situation.”

The biggest hindrance in getting the bayou cleared is the millions of dollars it would take to fund the project, money the police jury doesn’t have.

Ferrington said he has been working to get the problem fixed, but so far the response has been limited to correspondence.

“(The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers) did agree that there is some stuff in Cocodrie Bayou that was holding the water up, but they have not responded with any funding to handle this,” he said.

That’s not stopping him, though.

“With dry weather, you sort of forget the problem, but I am not forgetting this,” Ferrington said. “I am constantly working on getting something done on Cocodrie Bayou.”

One thing that will likely be different should a major storm wreak havoc on the area is that most farmers are likely to have crop insurance, something that wasn’t necessarily the case in 2008, Daniels said.

“It would be foolhardy not to take crop insurance,” he said. “The bankers and the Farmers’ Home Administration are going to require crop insurance.”

This year, Daniels is hoping for a bumper crop, and the rain the area has been getting thus far has been perfect, he said.

Provided no big storms come through, the area might get that bumper crop, Daniels said.

“If we catch some rain in July and August, we will be fine,” he said.