Broken Healer

Parish planners speak on progress

Jimmy Vickers, director of parish planning for the Calcasieu Parish Police Jury, brought three of his staff to the Sulphur Kiwanis Club to outline how the parish is doing on a number of issues. Pam Mattingly, assistant director of planning, spoke about Hazard Mitigation and how FEMA is working to make it less likely for some Calcasieu residents to get flooded again. “It’s called the multi jurisdictional Hazard Mitigation plan, and it basically identifies all the hazards in Calcasieu parish, and has ways that we can go in and reduce those hazards,” Mattingly said. Flooding is one of the main hazards in the parish, Mattingly said, and so much of their work has to do with reducing a potential flood’s impact. “We participated with FEMA to do certain projects in order to help people in the parish do this,” she said. “This is the grant program. Basically, we look for people or businesses that have contiguously flooded over the years,” Mattingly continued. FEMA then allocates a certain amount of money to the state, which gives that money to the parish and finally to the homeowner. This can come in a couple of different forms, including elevation projects to get buildings above a flood threshold, acquisition of property so that residents can move to a less disaster prone area, and rebuilding, where the parish goes in, demolishes a structure, and builds another from scratch. This new building would be less likely have to flood in the future, due to elevation or other mitigation methods. Jennifer Wallace, assistant director of Advanced Planning and Grants, gave an update on Vision: Calcasieu, and where that program is in its development. “Something that was very important to all of us was that we maximize the public input in this plan,” Wallace said. Vision: Calcasieu has hosted 60 meetings so far this year, some as public forums, some with the leaders of municipalities, and some with various boards around the parish. Wallace also said that, even once the parish implements whatever plan Vision: Calcasieu creates, every three to five years they will have public meetings and reviews in order to get feedback about any change to the plan. Wesley Crain spoke about Calcasieu parish’s wastewater and sewage problem. He cited a study in 1999 by McNeese professor Dr. Harold Stevens about the amount of raw sewage that is flowing into the ditches in unincorporated areas of the parish. “It’s a maintenance issue,” Crain said. He said that there are 30,000 individual sewer systems in the parish and that about 50 percent of them are not working properly. One fix would be to have those living in unincorporated areas, but are close enough to a municipality, tie into existing sewage treatment facilities.

Ben saunders ufc

Related posts: Grey s anatomy season 5 episode 8, Argos, Stormfront, Corinne survivor, Governor of louisiana