Cross Lake residents express frustration over flooding issues

SHREVEPORT, La. (KSLA) - The water level at Cross Lake is quite high right now, and those who live there are getting frustrated.

On Thursday, Feb. 2, KSLA spoke with a number of residents, who say this isn’t the first time they’ve had issues. Persistent rain has plagued the ArkLaTex all week, causing the ground to be heavily saturated and water levels to rise.

Those living in the Cross Lake area talked about how often they see flooding, what issues they think there are with the current flood prevention system and how they think those issues should be addressed, and the problems they see in the aftermath of flooding.

“Every two years it will flood out here. It gets over our piers,” said Johnny McGraw, a 6-year Cross Lake resident.

“At least six or seven times since I’ve lived here in 30 years. A few times, it’s been worse than this time, and other times about the same as this,” said Jimmy Baker, a 30-year Cross Lake resident,

As longtime residents, they’ve seen their fair share of floods in the area, which means they know what to do when it happens.

McGraw and Baker know how bad damage will be based on how high the water gets.

“When it gets as high as it’s been this time, there’s gonna be damages to boat houses. If there’s wind the water and the waves are gonna tear up the sides of boathouses,” said Baker.

With their experience, McGraw and Baker were able to gauge that this go-round wasn’t going to be the wors they’ve experienced, but they also feel the proper precautions haven’t been taken to solve the frequent problem.

“The spillway needs to be upgraded to where they can control the water level by letting water out more rapidly than what they can now. Whenever we get an excessive amount of rain, it overcomes the spillway it won’t release as fast as it’s coming in,” said Baker.

McGraw thinks the spillways need to be utilized more efficiently.

“They’ve got all the gates open, but I don’t think they opened them early enough. They knew the rain was coming and had been talking about it for over a week,” said McGraw.

Both residents agree that something needs to be done to solve this repeat issue.

“There should be better ways of telling how much water is coming and how much the lake is rising so that people can be forewarned a little better.”

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