Livingston Council hears erosion plan

• By BOB ANDERSON
• Advocate Florida parishes bureau
• Published: Apr 29, 2008 - Page: 3B - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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LIVINGSTON — Regulations requiring developers to use erosion mats and gentler slopes on ditches would help prevent erosion problems, a representative of a parish engineering consulting firm told Livingston Parish Council members Monday night.

The issue has drawn increasing complaints in new subdivisions, said Bobby Badeaux, executive vice president of Forte and Tablada Inc.

“You see these same problems over and over and over,” Badeaux said.

He advised members of the council’s Subdivision Committee to add to its subdivision regulations a requirement that developers install erosion blankets.

“Get rid of 2-to-1 slopes that are causing erosion,” Badeaux told committee members, suggesting that the council require less steep 3-to-1 slopes instead.

Badeaux penciled the recommendations into the parish’s subdivision ordinance.

Don Wheat, chairman of the committee, asked the council clerk to put the proposed changes on the agenda for next week’s council meeting.

The committee offered no formal recommendation to the council, because a quorum didn’t show up for the meeting.

“Those are the main two things that have been causing the problem,” Wheat said of the slopes and lack of erosion-control blankets.

“Times change and things change,” he said. “If something doesn’t work, we have to change it.”

The council has seen an increasing number of complaints about erosion from residents of new subdivisions.

Part of the problem is that subdivision residents are building fences and even putting storage buildings on land that is part of the parish’s drainage servitude, said Badeaux, who represents the firm that reviews engineering for the Livingston Parish Planning Commission.

When people put fences in the servitude, the parish’s Department of Public Works and drainage districts cannot get equipment into the area to maintain the drainage, he said.