Residents in several unincorporated areas in north Lafayette Parish and Shenandoah Estates, which is surrounded by the city of Broussard and has been urging Mayor Charlie Langlinais to annex the unincorporated island for years, are in line to finally begin receiving clean, potable Lafayette Utilities System water. Residents in Shenandoah have long complained about what they say is a shoddy, unreliable water service provided by Total Environmental Solutions Inc., a private company.
According to District 7 City-Parish Councilman Don Bertrand, who represents the Broussard area, an agreement was signed Wednesday between TESI and Lafayette Parish Waterworks District North in which the latter will take over service for the unincorporated areas. Waterworks District North is one of the rural Lafayette Parish water providers under the Lafayette Consolidated Government umbrella governed by a board of commissioners and in a long-term contract with LUS for wholesale water, which the districts sell to residents in unincorporated parts of the parish. The five smaller municipalities are also in wholesale contracts with LUS — City-Parish President Joey Durel is pressing for severing the contract with Broussard — so consequently about 80 percent of residents in Lafayette Parish receive LUS water. Shenandoah and the other subdivisions that will be affected by the agreement do not, and they’ve had to rely on private providers like TESI.
“I would suspect that their rates will go down because they’re paying a premium now for a horrible product,” Bertrand says of the Shenandoah residents. “They will pay a rate — what that rate’s going to be right now I don’t know.”
Getting the residents in Shenandoah hooked up to Waterworks District North, Bertrand says, will be expensive, adding that he’s “working with [state Sen.] Page Cortez to find some money for Water District North so that they can come up with the funds to run the lines to them because it’s a substantial cost.”
MAY 17 Here's a column from James Gill, this time in the Advocate. Gill, who has jumped ship from the Picayune, writes about the absurdity of dueling polls in this post. The numbers are so wildly different, it is obvious that both sides are "cooking the books," he writes. In particular, he looks at Sen. Mary Landrieu, and how her recent actions in DC have been received by those polled. Gill's acerbic, amusing prose is a welcome addition to a paper so conservative as to be occasionally lacking in personality.
MAY 17 Blogger Tom Aswell continues delivering bombshells about the state education department and Gov. Jindal's education "reform" efforts. In this post, he reports that students in the Shreveport area have been signed up for a charter school without their knowledge or consent. Most interesting to Aswell is how this Texas-based charter (with ties to GOP types) got the personal student information it has, if the students didn't give it.
MAY 17 This post by JR Ball in the Baton Rouge Business Report is an interesting tongue-in-cheek look at recent Baton Rouge economic development efforts. Among the items he examines is the idea that gaining a Costco makes BR a "world-class city." (Really? All you need is a different brand of Sam's? MK!) This effort, and other recent ones, are all built on the taxpayer's back, with tax zones, tax incentives and tax rebates, Ball writes.
MAY 17 Blogger CB Forgotston is critical of the legislature's reliance on a revenue-estimating committee's decision to include projected tax amnesty income in this year's forecast. That's a problem, CB posts, because the deadline for these people to pay their taxes is June 30, 2014. So when do you think these people who haven't paid taxes in years are going to pay their taxes? Surely not before June 30, and that means the money won't be there for this year's budget, he argues.
MAY 17 Here's an interesting blog out of California by a Hollywood writer, attorney and academic named Brian Alan Lane. He blogs about higher ed, and was a whistle-blower in a scandal over false credentials. In this post, he takes aim at LSU's new top dog, King Alexander. It's convoluted and a little confusing, but it sure makes Alexander a lot more interesting than he was yesterday.
MAY 17 Blogger Robert Mann writes about the LSU Board's refusal to allow Dr. Fred Cerise to testify before the legislature about Gov. Jindal's plan to close down all the state's charity hospitals and dump the poor on the private system. It's hard to imagine anyone more qualified than Cerise to testify about that, so why would anyone try to prevent him doing so? Mann thinks it is because the powers that be aren't interested in hearing any truth about the plan.
MAY 17 This post on the Louisiana Sinkhole Bugle, a blog that notes developments in the Bayou Corne and Jefferson Island salt domes, talks about a proposed expansion of the salt dome storage under Lake Peigneur in Iberia Parish. Residents are working against it for several reasons, including two biggies: the sinkhole disaster in Bayou Corne and the continuing, unexplained bubbling on the surface of the Lake.
MAY 17 NOLA police arrested more people Thursday accused of either being involved in the Mother's Day shooting or hiding the suspect afterward, this Gambit story reports. The NOLA police chief said he suspects the whole thing was gang-related and throws out a challenge to the gangs: he's got informants now, he says, and he knows a lot more than the gangs want him to know. The people who live in the neighborhoods terrorized by gangs are ready to talk, he says.
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