State Sen. Gary Smith is asking the House to withdraw a bill he introduced in the legislature that would have allowed St. Charles Parish to restrict local airboat travel.
The bill had caused debate between local hunters and airboat operators. Some hunters felt like the loud airboats caused wildlife to flee their hunting leases, while airboat operators complained that the law would hurt their businesses.
The bill passed the Senate in a unanimous vote in mid-April, but Smith said he has since received calls from numerous constituents who are worried about what the legislation may mean for them.
“We want to make sure we don’t create a hodgepodge throughout South Louisiana of airboat laws and regulations,” Smith said. “You have to have some kind of a standard in dealing with these airboats and the operation of them.”
As it was written, the bill would have allowed the Parish Council to develop rules and regulations for local airboat travel and the St. Charles Parish Sheriff’s Office would have been tasked with enforcing those regulations parishwide.
“[W]e need to make sure we craft this right so it is fair, so that the sheriff in each of these parishes can adequately respond to and police this,” Smith said. “Sometimes when you first look at these situations it seems a whole lot simpler, then as you are peeling the layers of the onion back you realize how much more complicated and complex it is.”
Smith said passage of the law may have been particularly troubling for airboat operators who would have crossed parish lines to find themselves in violation of St. Charles Parish law.
“If we start hodgepodging this thing together with Jefferson Parish passing a law, then St. Charles is on the books and then St. John–and somebody who is running between St. Charles and Lafourche down there in Bayou Des Allemands who doesn’t even realize they are over St. Charles waters,” Smith said. “The next thing you know the sheriff or Wildlife and Fisheries or somebody is up there giving someone a ticket for something that is legal in Lafourche that isn’t in St. Charles Parish.”
Sheriff Greg Champagne said after he heard about the bill he researched how local control of airboats in Jefferson Parish has played out and was not encouraged by the results.
“I spoke with the Jefferson Parish Sheriff and I understand that (locally regulating airboats) has not really worked,” Champagne said. “It really has not been a good situation.”
Champagne also said airboats are already governed by the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries and by the Coast Guard. In addition, it is unclear if parish laws still on the books since 1970 that mandate licensing of airboat operators and permitting of airboats by the sheriff’s department would have come into effect again with the passage of the law.
“We’ve got a lot to do and I’m concerned about additional burdens and whether they are really necessary,” Champagne said.
Champagne said contrary to claims otherwise, the Sheriff’s Office can do very little to stop airboat noise from affecting local hunters.
“If somebody is drunk driving in a boat or trespassing in a boat we can do something,” Champagne said. “This seems to be a noise issue and I don’t know what the answer is to that. That’s a problem between the hunters and the airboat operators.”
Commercial airboat operator Arthur Matherne said he regrets saying the Sheriff’s Office was “not doing their job” and that he was more concerned that the legislation would have a negative effect on his business.
“I was upset and I think I spoke offhand,” Matherne said.
Doug Hymel, whose father Morris Hymel holds a hunting lease near a commercial airboat tour operator off of Highway 3127 in Boutte, said they talked to the airboat operators who were affecting their hunting grounds one-on-one, but were not able to clear up the situation.
“We tried working with them and they just wouldn’t budge. They wouldn’t hear of it. We’re not trying to put them out of business, but in my opinion I think they ought to do like Mr. Arthur Matherne,” Hymel said. “I’ve been knowing Arthur for years. He’s always had a lease to run his boats on his own lease. That’s the thing to do.”
Hymel said they would definitely support similar legislation again next year.
“A lot of the guys that go back there and fish–they get aggravated with them too,” Hymel said. “It ain’t going to just take one or two people voicing their opinion on this, it is going to take a whole bunch of us.”
Be the first to comment