Property owners angry over drainage
Published 12:00 am Thursday, March 14, 2002
By LEONARD GRAY
HAHNVILLE – Willowdale property owners spoke out Monday to the St. Charles Parish Council with their concerns over subsurface drainage.
At question was a June 2001 moratorium on replacing swale-type drainage systems (open-ditch) with sub-surface drainage in several areas of the parish.
The ordinance itself, originally sponsored by Councilman Terry Authement to apply only to parts of District Four near Bayou Gauche, but other council members piggybacked other sections of the parish, which added to the confusion.
Ed Wahden, board member of the Willowdale Property Association, said he had addressed his confusion to the parish public works office and left there still confused.
“One of my engineering interns might have been confused,” commented Public Works Director Greg Bush, who explained that if a subdivision accepted by the parish after 1992 was originally designed with an open-swale system, culverts would not be permitted, and added, “As long as I’m here, it’s not going to happen.”
Fellow Willowdale resident Jack Leezy concurred, and said, “We don’t oppose subsurface drainage, as long as it’s properly engineered.”
In other activity, the late Deputy Assessor Sandra Dufrene Oubre, was honored for her service to the community and praised by her former boss, Assessor Clyde “Rock” Gisclair. A plaque was presented to her husband, Gerard Oubre.
The council also approved an amendment to an engineering contract with Camp Dresser & McKee Inc. for the Luling Oxidation Pond, which drew the ire of some council members.
Councilwoman Dee Abadie complained because she was of the understanding the contract was concluded after December’s Amendment Eight, this being Amendment Nine of the 1995 contract.
“This kind of hanky-panky really bothers me,” chimed in Councilman G. “Ram” Ramchandran.
However, wastewater supervisor Sammy Accardo, in defending the request for $1.3 million of more work, declared, “I will never give B-S to this council!”
The request is to fund an update to the facility plan, managing modifications to the pond, flow monitoring and sewer system evaluation, hydraulic modeling and pump station improvements and re-rating the Hahnville wastewater treatment plant and grant administration.
The $1.3 million is mostly funded by a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency grant, said Accardo.
The amendment was approved by a 5-4 vote, with Clayton Faucheux, Lance Marino, Brian Fabre, Desmond Hilaire and April Black voting in favor.
The pond is being upgraded so as to handle wastewater from the Ama/Luling area, until most of the Luling area wastes can be re-routed to the Hahnville plant. This would allow for the shutdown of the overtaxed Ama plant and allow for further development in the Ama area, Accardo said. The council also agreed to the purchase of 3.428 acres adjoining the Bayou Gauche Recreational Park to add more facilities, including a walking path. Sale price paid to Richard and Linda Chiasson is $108,684.32. The approval vote was unanimous.
Finally, the council heard a report from Community Serviced Director Robel Howard on his department’s 2001 activities.
This included six houses weatherized, 803 clients for energy assistance totaling $147,898, the summer food program which provided breakfast and lunch for local children for a total of nearly 12,000 meals, tutoring of 210 fourth- and eighth-graders for LEAP, costing $20,000, and 36 cases of emergency assistance, mostly helping victims of residential fires.
At Monday’s meeting, the council also unanimously approved the department’s participation with Jefferson Parish and the City of Kenner in the Home Investment Partnership Act, giving the parish access to federal funding by being piggybacked with the other governments.
The consortium will be responsible for rehabilitating six houses per year at a price of $25,000 per house through 2005, Howard said.