Stiffer sewer rules vote set

• Advocate Acadiana bureau
• Published: Nov 25, 2008 - Page: 1BA - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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LAFAYETTE — The City-Parish Council is set to vote today on tougher sewer standards for rural areas of the parish and hear an appeal from a developer whose 73-lot subdivision was shot down by the city’s planning commission.

The more stringent sewer regulations would require community waste treatment systems for all subdivisions of 15 homes or more.

The council meets at 5:30 p.m. in the City-Parish Council Auditorium in the main City-Parish Government building on University Avenue.

Under regulations for areas outside the city, community treatment systems are required only for subdivisions of 125 homes or more.

The lack of regulations means that rural subdivisions often rely solely on individual septic tank systems, which usually flow into roadside ditches.

Councilman Purvis Morrison has pushed the new regulations.

He said he began researching the issue after learning that a planned 75-home subdivision in his district could go forward with 75 separate septic tanks flowing into ditches in the subdivision.

With a community system, each home would be connected via sewer pipe to one central treatment system.

The larger treatment system could still discharge into a nearby waterway but would keep treated sewage out of roadside ditches.

The community systems are also more likely to be maintained and more likely to face inspection by regulatory officials.

The proposed ordinance also calls for rural community sewer systems to be designed to easily connect to a municipal system should public sewer lines be extended near a subdivision.

In the developer’s appeal, Steven Montgomery is asking the council to overturn a decision by the Lafayette Planning Commission that bars him from moving forward on The Cottages, a 73-lot residential development planned for 14 acres off Tabb and Jenkins roads.

Several residents in the area have objected to the development, complaining of the possibility of increased traffic and drainage problems.