How years of storm water pond construction are causing issues in Baton Rouge metro area

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How years of storm water pond construction are catching up on some Baton Rouge-area parishes

Jessie Hayes stuck a long, thin twig into the shallow pond behind his house.

The stick quickly hit bottom and then slid down farther into the muck — easily about 8 inches deep.

Hayes was demonstrating Friday how much the narrow stormwater detention pond behind his house in the Galvez area of Ascension Parish had filled in with sediment since it was built more than a decade ago.

For more than three years, Hayes, 48, has been on a fruitless quest to have parish government, fellow Norwood Lake homeowners, a nearby subdivision's developer and even a next-door landowner to deepen the pond beyond its range of 6 inches to a foot down.

"The only people that care about the pond are the people who back up to it," said Hayes, former president of his neighborhood's now-idled homeowner's association.

Hayes believes the pond can drain less, and that its mucky bottom endangers anyone who might fall into it.

His fight reflects an emerging problem with such ponds, which have proliferated since the 1990s as new development sprawls into ever lower reaches of the Amite River Basin.

The ponds are often cited as justification that a new development won't flood neighbors, but maintaining them in Ascension, East Baton Rouge and Livingston is left to homeowners — unlike other forms of shared infrastructure, such as pipes, canals, pumps or levees.

In recent years, neighborhoods like Mossy Oaks, Willow Lake and the Shadows at Manchac in Ascension and Acadiana Place in Livingston have grappled with maintenance, design-and-construction and other pond problems that, in some cases, prompted litigation.

While some issues revolve around plant growth or caved-in banks, the big-dollar concern is dredging out the kind of siltation Hayes sees in his neighborhood pond. Dredging can cost from $80,000 to $120,000, depending on a lake's size.

East Baton Rouge Councilwoman Chauna Banks said ponds are also becoming a way to skirt responsibility over future flooding.

"It is now a loophole for the developers to just go on and be able to be approved," she said, "and it basically leaves them with no liability regarding long-term maintenance."

'Right now, nothing is in place'

While subdivision plans are recorded at the courthouse, Ascension, East Baton Rouge and Livingston parishes don't comprehensively track the number or location of ponds. Local governments keep pond pipes clear, but have few other responsibilities. Generally, they only respond to a pond problem if someone complains.

Yet, with new development come more ponds. One at a time, they are expanding into a large, privatized part of the regional flood protection network, with uncertain funding and a bill that may come due one day.

While some homeowner associations have figured out how to pay for ponds, others have struggled to maintain them. Many neighborhoods don't have an association.

Banks and a few other local officials have begun to question this paradigm of private management and loose oversight. In Livingston Parish, officials say they are examining whether drainage districts should take over maintenance completely.


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