Gov't

Central’s Riverfront Property at Risk

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By Dave Freneaux

    In a meeting Tuesday night it was explained that legislation is in the works to enable the State of Louisiana to force Central's property owners along the Comite River to sell their property against their will.  The informational meeting about the Comite River Diversion Canal was sponsored by area elected officials including Representatives Clif Richardson and Bodi White and Senator Dale Erdy.

    The building of the canal to reduce flooding in our area will affect almost 500 acres of wetlands, requiring "mitigation".  Mitigation is the process of creating or improving designated wetland acreage or preserving larger amounts of natural habitat.  It seems that some 20 years ago the Corps of Engineers did a study and chose to designate a narrow corridor of property along the banks of the Comite River as the ONLY place such mitigation would be allowed to be done in conjunction with this project.  Since that time, wetlands mitigation as a concept has expanded to include land banks of willing property owners who will gladly sell their property to the government, but the rules for this project did not allow for that.

    Our legislators passed a bill last year which prevents the State from taking property against the landowner's will for this project, but there is new legislation pending which could reverse that.  The legislators from the Central area are fighting the new bill.  The entire problem could be solved by a simple action on the part of the Corps of Engineers to redefine the area for wetlands mitigation.  You are encouraged to view the video of this meeting on CentralSpeaks.com by clicking the CentralSpeaksTV icon at the top of any page.

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