At Wednesday’s Iberia Parish Council meeting, engineer Wayne LaBiche explained why placing a pump station at Armenco Canal next to the Robert B. Green building is the best solution to solve flooding there.

Council members didn’t balk, so LaBiche will continue with plans to have the specifications ready for the December deadline to tap into the state’s $1.4 million capital outlay fund.

LaBiche said parish officials ex-hausted other avenues to correct the natural canal’s flooding issues, and the “pump station is the best alternative.”

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Funding for the $1.7 million project still will be about $300,000 to $400,000 short, but New Iberia City Council member Ernest Wilson was on hand to ensure the parish and Armenco’s main proponent, Councilwoman Maggie Daniels, that he’s “100 percent” behind the project.

The city will probably kick in funds to make up the difference, especially considering the pump part of the station at West End Park will be inside the city limits.

“I’m pretty sure the mayor (Hilda Curry) will (consider helping out),” Wilson said in parish council chambers at the courthouse.

Overflowing water inundates areas such as Shot Street, the St. Edward Subdivision and Spencer Loop. LaBiche plans to divert the floodwaters via pumps and 16-inch piping, buried 3 feet underground, into Bayou Teche.

The effect on Bayou Teche will be “negligible,” though Councilman Jerome Fitch worried an area near Jeanerette already overflows even without the pump. He was to meet with LaBiche today to discuss either bigger culverts in the Jeanerette area or other measures.

But Fitch said he was on board with fixing Armenco, if it didn’t hurt his area of the parish or the people he represents.

LaBiche said the pump station would only start working during large storm events that cause excess flooding.

That’s the water that will be pumped into Bayou Teche, allowing the Armenco to do what it’s supposed to do until that overflow event.

The point of the specification deadlines, Daniels said, is to get the funding, which is available either in December or early January.

At a brief meeting at the canal about 4 p.m. Wednesday before the parish council meeting, Daniels met with LaBiche, Councilmen Curtis “Joe” Boudoin and Lloyd Brown, and nearby West End resident Rosetta Diggs.

The group descended a few feet into the canal to get a first-hand look at where the station will be placed. All agreed it was long past time to fix the issue, which has been on the parish’s plate for more than two decades.

The Armenco Canal is about nine miles long and “snakes like the Bayou Teche” underneath Admiral Doyle and past Petit Anse, LaBiche said later.

“This will fix the problem permanently,” he said.