łÒ°ż±·ŽÜŽĄłą·Ął§Ìęâ The site of a future three-story, $26 million Ascension Parish courthouse with advanced security features is where the government action is on East Worthey Road. It's also along a tributary of Bayou Francois and, like 70 percent of the parish, in the 100-year flood plain the federal government designates as the most at-risk for flooding.
Local leaders and GraceHebert Architects have been working to design the courthouse, which will be paid for with future civil filing fees. But the building's site and the plans to mitigate the flood risk have stirred concerns in some quarters and is requiring extra measures to try to allay those concerns. Â
Plans call for the use of dirt fill to raise the courthouse, but doing so potentially puts the project in conflict with the same worries now driving a proposed parish floodplain management ordinance. Though the ordinance has been stalled, it would change how growth happens in the Ascension's lowest-lying areas by limiting the use of dirt.Â
Councilman Daniel "Doc" Satterlee listed an array of concerns this past week as the council considered hiring a firm to do an expanded hydrological analysis of the project. Among his worries, he noted the courthouse plans are moving forward even as the floodplain ordinance is unfinished. He said that, perhaps, the courthouse should have an open bottom floor for parking.
"It bothers me that I think we have too many carts in front of too many horses here in this process," he said.
No one argues that the new courthouse won't be in a convenient location. Next-door is the more than two-year-old parish governmental complex. The next building over from the complex is the Ascension Parish Clerk of Court, and catty-corner from the parish complex is the existing Courthouse Annex, which parish officials say will remain open after the new courthouse is built.
But the use of dirt to raise homes and other buildings has proved a controversial development practice in Ascension, especially since the August 2016 flood.
łÒ°ż±·ŽÜŽĄłą·Ął§Ìęâ The judges of the 23rd Judicial District and other court officials are eyeing a new Ascension Parish Courthouse, saying overcrowdin…
Though development rules require new structures be above the height of waters predicted in a 100-year flood, residents and some officials have complained that using dirt to meet that goal floods neighbors in the process, despite promises that detention ponds mitigate the impact.
In August, amid criticism from some on the Parish Council that the floodplain ordinance was moving too slowly, Councilman Dempsey Lambert, chairman of drainage for eastern Ascension, said that the ordinance was, in fact, on hold. Lambert said the new courthouse could require more fill than what the proposed ordinance would have allowed.
âI donât want something to be put in and then we got to turn right around and go against our recommendation,â he said then in an interview.
Since then, the amount of dirt planned to raise the courthouse has been reduced to three feet deep, the maximum allowed under the proposed ordinance.
Council Chairman Bill Dawson said Friday the current plans wouldn't conflict with the proposed ordinance, which remains in limbo awaiting other analysis. Even with the reduction, the courthouse would still be 2 feet above the estimated height of a 100-year-flood, or a 1 percent chance flood, engineers said.
On Sept. 6, the Parish Council also agreed to buy 5.5 acres across the Bayou Francois tributary that will be next to the new courthouse. The extra land would be used as a source of dirt fill and for a detention pond to counteract the effect of the fill in the flood plain.
Gasper Chifici, an engineer and former parish planing commissioner who is working as the parish's representative on the project, told the council in August that buying the site would save the parish up to $100,000 in hauling dirt. The site could also potentially offer alternate access from the new courthouse onto La. 44 and already has a pond that could be expanded for flood risk mitigation.
He added that without the added property, mitigating the drainage effects from the new courthouse would require more costly methods that he termed "marginal," using up parts of the courthouse site for ponds that could otherwise be green space.
"The civil engineers looked at it and believe it's possible that we'd have to add more exotic measures to be able to solve the problem on the property. It can be done, but it's more costly than we'd like to see," he said.
The extra land, the sale of which wasn't recorded by Friday, will cost $450,000 and be split between parish government and a fund holding excess revenue from new civil filing fees for the courthouse debt.
This past week, the Parish Council took up the extra hydrological analysis and the selection of Quality Engineering to do the job.
In an interview, Deric Murphy, one of the owners of the firm, said the analysis will look at a roughly 100-acre area upstream and downstream of the site to see how the courthouse would affect surrounding properties, including East Ascension High School across the street.
Parish President Kenny Matassa told the council that GraceHebert recommended that Quality Engineering do the analysis because the firm had done the first round of drainage analysis as part of the project's design team.Â
"So unless y'all want to delay building the courthouse, I would hope y'all pass this," Matassa said.Â
Though Satterlee argued the selection of Quality Engineering was a conflict of interest, a strong council majority disagreed in an 8-2 vote. Only Satterlee and Councilman Aaron Lawler opposed hiring the firm. Councilman Todd Lambert was absent.
A school system spokeswoman said Friday the district had no opinion on the courthouse site.