Large new community in Gonzales already having some street flooding issues...

The fix is to pump water from the retention ponds when there isn't a lot of rain, so that they have more storage capacity during rain storms.

But that's illegal in Ascension Parish for some reason. I have no idea why. The goal should be to slowly release water from these retention ponds during dry periods so that they can hold more runoff when they are truly needed; thus not overwhelming the public drainage infrastructure.

quote:

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When the developers of the Conway subdivision introduced themselves to Gonzales in 2015, they were proposing something new for the area — the kind of highly planned, old-school neighborhood made famous by them more than two decades ago in Lafayette's River Ranch.

With echoes of an old city neighborhood mixed with businesses and apartments, Conway's developers pitched their community as a step up from the norm in Ascension Parish, with prime access to Interstate 10 and either Baton Rouge or New Orleans.

The builders have made features out of the large live oaks on the former 344-acre cattle ranch and honed architectural details, but residents say Conway has a significant and unexpected problem now several years into construction: chronic street flooding that can linger for days after moderate rains and at one point blocked the neighborhood's entrance.

As parish officials search for a solution, the street flooding problem, which hasn't inundated any homes, highlights the difficulties the fast-growing region has had in using a mix of private and public drainage systems to allow continued home construction in flood-prone areas.

Parish officials have pinned the blame on a 268-acre wetlands conservation bank north of I-10 from Conway and through which all the development's water must pass; conservation bank officials dispute the claim.

The problem drew local officials' and the developer's attention in 2020. By May 2021, after internal meetings with city and parish officials and the consultants and a new round of analysis, the builder, Southern Lifestyle Development, proposed to pay for a $1 million fix.

The developer would install new, automatic pumps to lower unexpectedly high detention ponds and allow the street flooding to drain, but the homeowners association would have to maintain them long term at a likely monthly fee of $5 per homeowner, a Gonzales city timeline says.

Ascension Parish doesn't allow neighborhood-level pumps but requires gravity flow from subdivisions to feed its huge regional pumps.

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