LEONARD GRAY / L’Observateur / July 14, 1999

LULING – Serious concerns about drainage peppered the questions raised at a town hall meeting Monday on the planned Ashton Plantation Estates development.

Sixty-five people packed the St. Charles Parish council chamber inHahnville to review the plans of Rathborne Land and Levert Land companies.

The residential and commercial development is to add more than 2,000 homes to Luling, between Interstate 310 and the present town, over the next 20 years.

The first 210-lot phase may begin construction before the end of the year, if all the appropriate permits are received. People are expected to startmoving into the newly-built homes by mid-2001.

The town hall meeting was hosted by Parish Councilmen Bill Sirmon, Brian Champagne and Ellis Alexander. At the end of the two-hour meeting,Sirmon pledged another soon.

Gregory Lier of Rathborne and Danny Hebert, vice-president of Krebs, Lasalle, LeMieux Consultants, laid out the plans in a 40-minute presentation to a quiet, attentive audience.

Following the presentation, audience members shot arms upward to get their attention and raise questions about runoff from the development onto neighboring streets.

“We already flood,” Barney Ingram declared. “I don’t see any studies totake care of the existing flooding now.”Some called for pumping rainwater into the river. Others called fordredging of major canals.

Debra Dufresne-Vial pointed out that construction of Interstate 310 and Louisiana Highway 3127 effectively leveed off that section of old Luling, boxed in with Paul Maillard Road and River Road. “The parish needs to digout and maintain the present canals,” she said.

Lier and Hebert pointed out the holding capacity of the on-site lakes to be built will improve the water runoff management. Water will be divertedtoward the 80-Arpent Canal, where it is joined by runoff from the Esperanza cane fields.

The idea of the lakes is to control the flow of water, so as not to cause backup at the pumps, and move water effectively away from residences.

“Phase One will offer storm water storage in lakes where none exists today,” according to the developers’ brochure on the project.

All this, however, failed to satisfy some people. “Those lakes don’timpress me,” Emile Webre Jr. of Ashton Road said.The planned community will also include, in time, a “town center,” where a grocery, pharmacy and other small shops may be located. An elementaryschool, either public or private, is also tentatively planned for the area, and talks are continuing with the St. Charles School Board.Sirmon wrapped up the meeting with a promise to hold another soon, together with the parish’s public works director, Richard Wright, to answer questions not addressed to the audience’s satisfaction.

Lier, meanwhile, said the plans will be available in the parish’s public libraries in a week for public review.

“I think it’s a good plan,” Roland Mongrue noted. Mongrue owns severalbusinesses next to the planned development on River Road.

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