BATON ROUGE - A drainage ditch that snakes through a neighborhood near Perkins Road and Siegen Lane can sometimes overflow when it rains. Before it does again, people want it addressed and called 2 On Your Side.

Blanche Butler lives in Perkins Village. After a storm, water from the ditch behind her home swells with water and overflows into her backyard. It's flooded her neighbor's house before. Her son, Leo Haynes, listens to her concerns.

"She's been calling every year about this," said Haynes.

After living in Perkins Village for almost 30 years, Butler says things have changed but the ditch has remained the same. It's not doing the job it once did.

Wendell Carrier lives further downstream. He told WBRZ about his concerns in 2022 after his home flooded.

"We started trying to take matters into our own hands," he said.

Carrier got some results earlier this summer. The city improved the section of the ditch that runs beside his home. It's the only section of the ditch improved in the neighborhood. He's watched as the waterway swells and spills over the street. Sometimes, it's because there's a blockage at the culverts.

"The drainage system needs to be cleaned out a lot more often," said Carrier.

There is concern that there is too much water coming to their neighborhood from other areas. They have their eye on a retention pond in the neighborhood next door. They'd like to know where the water is flowing. If it's in their neighborhood, Haynes doesn't think his mom's neighborhood can handle the volume.

"The canal is clearly not built to carry the water, rainwater, so it's backing up," he said.

Haynes thinks something needs to be done to ease fears within the neighborhood and prevent more people from flooding.

The city treats the ditch through Perkins Village several times a year with herbicide. It will be sprayed again in the fall.