By Jack M. Willis
Journal Correspondent

His business card says volumes, condensed in as few words as possible, of a vocation that continually renders a great service to mankind. With the name Bill Chaumont, you instantly deduce that he is of French extraction, and in fact he speaks Acadian French fluently. He is a Louisiana State Certified Operator, and his card further reads that he is a Source Water Protection Specialist.

I first met Bill, but I didn't really meet him, in August of 2005 when I was on my way to Bossier City to the Red River Research Station for the annual meeting of the Northwest Louisiana Watershed Summit. On my way up from Pineville I had taken a breakfast stop at a fast-food restaurant near the intersection of I-49 and LA 6. As soon as I walked in I met Bill, whom I had never seen before, with him looking at me and me taking a second glance at him, it was as if we knew each other, but we really didn't. I wolfed my biscuit and coffee down and got back on the road to Bossier City.

When I walked into the convention room at the Experiment Station, who was the first person I met? Why, Bill Chaumont, of course! We grabbed a cup of coffee, sat down with our packets of info relating to the meeting and started getting acquainted. We became good friends in a short hurry, because I had spent a lot of time in Southwest Louisiana attending S.L.I. in Lafayette, and in a crew doing helicopter and marsh buggy pipeline surveys in Cameron Parish. Even though I could rake the rice off Bill's accented voice, it sounded like home to me.

I asked Bill just what his job description consisted of. He handed me a business card while informing me that he was a "water operator", and a Source Water Specialist, and it was his job to lend technical assistance the many Water Districts which are part and parcel of Louisiana. He also aids in demonstrating to towns and communities how to properly re-treat and recycle waste water so it can be incorporated back into potable water fit for human consumption. Bill, if requested, will speak before any town council, parish council or any civic group, to inform them how they can best protect what is becoming a valuable commodity these days, their potable drinking water sources.

Bill is quick to point out that the Louisiana Rural Water Association is a non-profit organization and that their services are rendered absolutely free of charge. Bill went on to say, "Our salaries, operating expenses, and equipment are totally paid for through federal and state grants at no cost to a municipality or water district, and we are over 1000 members strong."

Little were we to know that in about two weeks Bill's everyday lifestyle was about to radically change with the advent of Hurricane Katrina. Two days after the monster roared ashore, Bill and a host of other water operators, many from other associations in other states, were speedily dispatched to Livingston Parish on Labor Day to set up operations in a rented 16x80 trailer, equipped with cots and bunk beds for the crew. They worked six days a week with a 24 hour leave on Sundays to run home, do laundry, get a home-cooked meal and back to the job of helping distressed, displaced, hurting people at least obtain drinking water.

Their boss was going to give them a whole weekend on the weekend of September 24th, and Bill headed for his home in Kinder, LA, which is also the main office of the Louisiana Rural Water Association. He knew Hurricane Rita was rumbling around offshore, but the last prognostication he heard, the eye was headed over into Texas. At the last minute it stormed ashore between Sabine Pass and Johnson Bayou, LA and Bill drove right into the rough right front quadrant of the devastating hurricane.

On September 26, Bill's boss split his 20 men up into two and four-man crews with Bill's crew heading for Cameron where they found that there was not a semblance of a residence left standing. First they had to go from lot to lot to locate meters of 800 to 900 connections. Wherever there had been a business or residence with a water district meter in operation before the storm hit, each and every valve had to be turned off, before the lines and the wells could be flushed out and decontaminated.

After they finished in Cameron they began the trek to Holly Beach, formerly known as the Louisiana Riviera, where only creosoted stilts stood as grim reminders of what were once comfortable, and in some instances, elegant camps and weekend retreats.

Every foot of water line for the ten miles to Holly Beach had to be probed and marked so utility crews replacing power poles would not drill through the water lines during power pole replacement. The same was true for another ten miles of line up to Hackberry where a four-foot high wall of storm surge had wiped the town virtually off the map. Locating the lines and meters was demanding work often needing manual excavation with shovels.

Bill chuckled and said, "I ate my share of MRE's (G.I. Meals Ready to Eat), so the evacuees in the Super Dome had nothing on me." The crews then started laboriously working the ten miles to the Johnson Bayou community where only five houses were left standing. Some of the water operators even slept in their trucks, because they realized the disadvantaged people were in dire need of potable water as soon as possible. Even though the crews marked the water lines with blue flags every few feet, in their haste to restore electrical service, the utility crews still hit the main water lines between the towns in three places.

The Louisiana Rural Water Association was able to open the main valve and turn the water back on to Cameron, Holly Beach, Hackberry and Johnson Bayou on Thanksgiving Day, much to the relief of many thankful people.

In retrospect Bill Chaumont lamented, "I talked to family after family who had lost everything they had, had no insurance, and essentially no hope whatsoever for the future. All they could do was cry, and I would cry with them, but you know, those people are a resilient people. Where they have chosen to live is an area where it is totally demanding 365 days a year to eke out a living."

Then the faintest trace of a smile crossed the weather-beaten, caring face of Bill Chaumont, and in his French accent he said with finality and firm conviction, "Dey'll make it, yeah!

Back