The Current has posted an update to its continuing coverage of issues with Lafayette City-Parish Government's drainage projects.
While Lafayette Consolidated Government went to court to seize land for its largest-ever detention project, it had a much easier time putting together parcels for its second largest, the newspaper reports.
Some 50 acres of land along Coulee Ile Des Cannes were purchased earlier this year from clients represented by LCG’s chief legal officer, Greg Logan. Some of the land had been on LCG engineers’ radar since at least the summer of 2020, public records show. Logan stayed close to the project and the transaction, failing to follow state requirements to properly cure himself of an ethical conflict, The Current is reporting.
The newspaper reports that Logan's connection to that land, part of a $30 million blockbuster detention facility near Scott, could create more problems for LCG’s signature drainage projects. The Coulee Ile Des Cannes detention facility is enormous, composed of multiple ponds totaling 90 acres on sites off Duhon Road. Together with ponds on Homewood Drive, across the Vermilion River, it comprises the Bayou Vermilion Flood Control Project, an $81 million program currently locked up in court and by a reimbursement squabble with state government.
Here's more of The Current story:
Communication between LCG and the Louisiana Division of Administration broke down earlier this year after the state learned that LCG allowed the project’s contractor, Rigid Constructors, to purchase 44 acres of land to keep the project going. In all, the state has been withholding more than $22 million in funding for months. Reached this week, state officials confirmed they have not released any of that money.
Today, the massive project sits idle but nearly complete — on both sides of the river.
The state’s decision on whether to release funds may ultimately hinge on the outcome of an audit/investigation of that unusual arrangement and much of the Guillory administration’s $110 million parish-wide drainage program. Tuesday night the City Council passed a resolution giving Council Chairwoman Nanette Cook the authority to sign legal and financial documents related to the investigation.
Unlike the legally entangled Lake Farm Road project near Costco and the Homewood Regional Detention Pond north of Milton, in which LCG used quick-take expropriation authority to seize land from two prominent Lafayette families, Coulee Ile Des Cannes properties were purchased by LCG from their private landowners, including one family Logan represented for more than two decades (city-parish attorneys are allowed to have a private practice).
To read The Current's full story, click here.
