After a year of near-constant issues, work on Lafayette’s massive, beleaguered Homewood Drive detention pond project is expected to restart this month following an $11.5 million settlement in March and another $22 million shot in the arm from the state last week, The Current is reporting.
The newspaper is reporting that Lafayette Consolidated Government’s Bayou Vermilion Flood Control project, which covers the Homewood project and a series of detention ponds along Coulee Ile Des Cannes near Duhon Road, has been mired in controversies stemming from LCG’s rush to complete the project since beginning it in December 2021.
Those problems have included a feud with state government over $30 million in reimbursements, an investigation by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and a costly expropriation lawsuit that halted work at Homewood for a year before ending in LCG’s $11.5 million settlement with the landowners in March.
But with those issues at least partially resolved, the Current reports, a path has been cleared for work to resume on the project for the first time in more than a year, pending approval from the state within the next two weeks, according to project engineer Pamela Granger.
“The state is currently giving concurrence on what we need the contractor to go back and do to start off,” Granger told neighbors of the multi-pond Homewood project that spans nearly 375 acres at a meeting of the Milton Civic Organization Tuesday night.
To read The Current's full story with all the details, click here.
