Officials consider city’s rates for plan to construct utility district

It occurred to me that in The Forum’s last issue (Aug. 7), I failed to mention that the review of the Bossier Parish Police Jury’s efforts to plan and construct a parish-wide utility district would take more than one column. Last time around, it was the rationale for the district; today it’s a look at the parish government’s progress via my recent visit with Police Jury Administrator Bill Altimus, and Utilities Director Larry Landry.

As previously noted, the cost of this undertaking is presently budgeted at $45 million. But that figure will likely increase in the future as the plan is expanded. Current progress – and future prospects – are best explained by Landry.

“It’s right about $45 million right now – that is taking us all the way out from Red Chute to Highway 157, up Princeton Road to Princeton School; Calumet Re nery is going to come to us. Most of the larger neighborhoods we already have. We’ve already had inquiries from a lot of the mobile home parks along that route that we’ll pick up as commercial customers if they want to,” Landry said.

Landry said that the parish is looking at three separate contracts “to try to keep the bids competitive and give people a lot of shots at getting involved.”

And rst, Landry said is the “collection – that’s to bring it all together and take everything away from these oxidation ponds and small mechanical plants.”

“The next project that we will be doing, in fact it’s in the reverse order, to get all of that over to the plant site, we have this forced main system,” Landry said and then laid out the plan.

“Right out here close to the cemetery [Hillcrest], we’ll have a large lift station. We’ll run at 20-inch line down Highway 80 to Stockwell Road, under [Interstate 220], all the way around and get over to Swan Lake Road. At Pete Modica Road, we’ll put in a second lift station ... because we want to have another centralized place for others to come to us. Then from that point, we’ll go with a 24-inch line all the way out past the end of Pete Modica Road to what is going to be the east-west corridor – the extension of Win eld Road (And that’s been laid out in the road plan.).”

“Then, we’ll follow that around and that will actually come across Airline on the south side of Wemple Road, which will continue on and miss that apartment complex – and go to Old Brownlee [Road] – then we’ll go north on Old Brownlee Road to Wemple Road. We’ll go down Wemple Road to Highway 3, thru Highway 3 to Cash Point, which is where the plant is going to be. This is all sewer – that’s about $45 million.”

In addition, Landry said, the parish is looking at including Kingston Road in the sewer planning, which is anticipated to see strong development over the next year or so. Landry noted that Kingston Road already has a “customer base” that has some treatment in place, so including this area in the sewer planning would close down that treatment and get it out of Willow Chute Bayou and redirect it to the planned treatment plant.

The third project involves a Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality project at Edwards Subdivision along Old Palmetto Road, which the Town of Benton will treat until the Kingston Road line is constructed. Then the ow will be directed to the Jury’s Cash Point treatment plant.

The jury’s planning also includes providing water service. Currently, that’s available only in the northern section of Haughton’s Dogwood subdivision. But Landry said the jury has had inquiries from several small existing water systems about the jury taking over their operations.

“We’re going to look at it; we’ll do a study on it,” Landry said.

And Altimus noted that in south Bossier Parish the Sligo water system board has requested that the Jury look at taking over their system as their water quality/quantity has issues.

Landry pointed to Bossier City as a source of providing water to areas of the parish, saying that he and parish engineer Butch Ford had visited with Bossier City Finance Director Joe Buf ngton to discuss both buying water from the city and customer billing. At this point, there is a question of the rate the city would give the parish.

“If given the amount of customers we have – as a wholesaler – they might be able to give us a much better rate on water,” Landry said.

Bossier Parish’s progress to construct a district-wide utility system is nothing short of ambitious and consistently, step-by-step, manifesting into yet another contributor to the parish’s continued and steady growth. And then there’s the steady progress on the Bossier Parish Transportation Plan – the topic of the next column.

Marty Carlson, a freelance writer, has been covering local news for the past 13 years. She can be reached via email at m_carlso@bellsouth.net.