A board member for the Sabine River Authority who made an email joke about the March Sabine River flood has submitted her resignation, the Longview News-Journal has reported.
Kimberly Johnson Fish of Longview was appointed to the river authority’s board of directors by Gov. Greg Abbott in December and took her seat in January. The river authority’s administrative offices are in Orange.
In March, record flooding occurred on the Sabine River with the level reaching 33.24 feet in Deweyville where the flood level is 24 feet. Orange also had record down-river flooding at 7.6 feet, with flood level at 4 feet. The river level in Orange was surpassed only by the Gulf of Mexico surge from Hurricane Ike.
The flooding led the Texas Department of Transportation to shut down Interstate 10. Traffic was diverted through Port Arthur into Louisiana or north to Interstate 20 through Longview.
This past Sunday, the Beaumont Enterprise had a story written from open records requests of emails sent by Sabine River Authority officials during the flooding. The story quoted an email from Fish to SRA General Manager David Montagne about the extra saying “Naturally, I’d like to take credit for the economic development initiative, but we all know I haven’t been here long enough to know where the keys to the flood water are located.”
A group of 239 plaintiffs have filed a lawsuit in Orange seeking damages from the Sabine River Authority for flooding their properties by the release of water from Toledo Bend reservoir.
The post SRA Board Member Resigns appeared first on KOGT.