A new, upscale neighborhood's streets keep flooding. Who's at fault, and how can it be fixed?
May 22—When the developers of the Conway subdivision introduced themselves to
With echoes of an old city neighborhood mixed with businesses and apartments, Conway's developers pitched their community as a step up from the norm in
The builders have made features out of the large live oaks on the former 344-acre cattle ranch and honed architectural details, but residents say Conway has a significant and unexpected problem now several years into construction: chronic street flooding that can linger for days after moderate rains and at one point blocked the neighborhood's entrance.
As parish officials search for a solution, the street flooding problem, which hasn't inundated any homes, highlights the difficulties the fast-growing region has had in using a mix of private and public drainage systems to allow continued home construction in flood-prone areas.
Parish officials have pinned the blame on a 268-acre wetlands conservation bank north of
The problem drew local officials' and the developer's attention in 2020. By
The developer would install new, automatic pumps to lower unexpectedly high detention ponds and allow the street flooding to drain, but the homeowners association would have to maintain them long term at a likely monthly fee of
In an unprecedented move, parish government's eastern drainage panel granted a one-off waiver late last year, allowing the pumps under a highly conditioned deal with the developer.
Among those conditions, parish government required the city of
Six months later, however, some residents have begun to question the wisdom of the pumps and their implications.
Some argue the pumps are simply a quick fix to a tough problem for the developer, which currently controls the homeowners association, so home construction can continue. Many others ask why they should bear the cost.
"Why should additional taxes be imposed on us to pay for the operation and maintenance of the pumps," he asked.
A change in position
Parish President
He says Southern Lifestyle hasn't met all the terms of the agreement in any case; the city of
Cointment's push to find a gravity-based solution is something of a shift from late last year when parish council members sitting on the drainage board waived their policy on pumps for Conway.
In November, parish administration officials faced questions from council members worried about departing from longstanding practice and setting a precedent that other builders could pursue.
Cointment and the parish's hired review engineer,
"I think the only way we see to solve the existing problems is a drainage pump situation," Sherrow told the council members on
Though dirt work on new phases was happening last week, home construction in those phases has been put on hold, city officials said, while they and the developer wait for parish officials' new review of a possible fix.
"It's really their call," said
"We, as the developer, are committed to working to find a solution and have even proposed a solution on our dime ... to remedy what we believe is an off-site problem," Vallee said.
Vallee noted the developer removed a beaver dam in a downstream waterway that was holding up water, but he said he doesn't believe other fixes will offer as much benefit as the pumps.
On Friday, Cointment said the parish would share more information when it has it.
"At this time, we are looking at all available options to help Conway subdivision with the street flooding during rain events," he said.
What happened?
For years, builders have used dirt fill in combination with man-made ponds in order to meet federal flood insurance standards for home elevations and to prevent new construction from flooding older, lower homes.
Dirt dug from ponds is used to raise homes on low-lying land. In general, the ponds temporarily hold rainfall from the new acres of hard surface streets, roofs and sidewalks, slowly releasing water over time and holding some high water from bayous and streams.
Conway, which is expected to have 826 single-family homes, plus apartment units, lofts and commercial sites, has four ponds, with six more proposed, plans and wetlands permits show.
Despite their critical role in preventing flooding and occasional maintenance and design flaw problems, these kinds of neighborhood ponds remain the responsibility of dozens of homeowners associations in
For this kind of passive, gravity-based system to work properly, however, engineers must assess how high water in the bayous and streams that receive the pond runoff are, on average, to set a correct height for the ponds' outlet pipes.
As it turns out at Conway, the original 2015 engineering set the outlet pipes too low for today's conditions, a 2023 reanalysis has found. The average water height in the main discharge canal for the neighborhood is 3 feet higher than engineers had originally estimated.
Water is backing up into the detention ponds, leaving them higher than they were designed to be and, as a result, with less storage capacity than planned to handle neighborhood runoff.
'How was this not caught?'
Though parish government backed Conway's original drainage study, the developer's analysis failed to look much beyond the property's northern boundaries at
"My question is: how was that not caught," Conway resident
Officials at Delta Land Services, which owns the Bayou Conway bank, said they didn't know their land bank was being blamed for the high water until contacted by a reporter earlier this month and hadn't then talked to parish officials about their theories on the flooding.
He said the bank will work with the parish if needed but disputed the land bank has anything to do with Conway's problems, saying the bank was approved and planted its trees years beforehand.
"All of that was done several years before the developer bought the property," Bergeron said.
For now, residents in Conway await a resolution. One of them,
"So, it is doable if it's necessary, but I like the idea of trying to find some other solutions to this, if there are other solutions," he said.
___
(c)2023 The Advocate, Baton Rouge, La.
Visit The Advocate, Baton Rouge, La. at www.theadvocate.com
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Neglected sewage systems are a public health risk for low-income communities
NU moving health insurance plans back to Blue Cross
Advisor News
Annuity News
Health/Employee Benefits News
Life Insurance News