Sewage gets top priority
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SORRENTO — The Sorrento Town Council voted unanimously Friday night to take emergency measures to get the town sewage treatment system in better working order.
The council was prompted to make the decision after a heavy rain put sewage in people’s homes for a second time last month.
The council voted to have an electrician repair a faulty breaker for a pump at the main lift station and to hire a vacuum truck to remove “grease balls” that town officials believe are clogging up sewer lines.
Before the vote, Councilman Lionel Melancon Jr. said he would rather bankrupt the town to fix the sewer problems than bankrupt the town paying fines to the state Department of Environmental Quality and still not have the sewer system fixed.
He said the most recent heavy rain, in late October, caused sewage to back up into 17 homes, up from two homes that had sewage during an earlier October rain.
Melancon said the problems are unacceptable but cannot be fixed in two days.
Mayor Blake LeBlanc also read new rules governing the conduct of public meetings after he had to gavel a premature end to a contentious meeting Tuesday, riled in part over town sewer problems.
LeBlanc’s new conduct rules include limiting public comment to three minutes and requiring the public to fill out forms in advance. The rules also allow the mayor to gavel meetings to order for disruptive remarks and have people removed if needed.
“No derogatory remarks will be tolerated from council and mayor or to council and mayor,” the rules say.
LeBlanc’s efforts Friday to, as he said, “change the culture” of how the council conducts meetings came two months after Tom Ed McHugh, executive director of the Louisiana Municipal Association, warned the council about its conduct following a previous rowdy meeting in August.
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