The Federal Emergency Management Agency has begun construction on its first group site in East Baton Rouge Parish for Mobile Housing Units to accommodate victims of the August flood, at least hundreds of whom are still staying in hotels more than four months after the disaster. Construction is expected to begin soon on a second site in Baton Rouge, and two others are planned to get underway early next month in Livingston Parish.
But one Metro Council member and residents of his district are opposed to the planned group site in their area and are hoping to stop it.
District 4 Councilman Scott Wilson says he did not find out until last weekend that FEMA is planning to develop a 64-pad group site on South Choctaw Drive near Larkswood Drive. The planned site backs up to the Rushmore subdivision, and Wilson says residents are concerned the addition of the group site will bring traffic and congestion to an area with an already overtaxed infrastructure.
“I’ve talked to residents and heard from them, and they’ve sent me signatures that they do not want it and they are against it,” he says. “I’ve told them I’m doing everything I can to keep it out of there.”
A FEMA spokesman says the Choctaw Drive group site, the largest planned for the area, was approved for development Dec. 1 and that a construction contract is expected to be issued by the end of this week. Wilson says work crews began surveying the area last weekend.
He is meeting later today with city-parish officials and representatives from FEMA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which is also working on the project, to argue against it.
“They’re going to spend millions putting in infrastructure, pads, electricity and the waste of taxpayer money is incredible,” he says. “They’re only supposed to be here for 24 months, but it’s going to go longer than 24 months and it’s going to string on and string on. I’m not happy about it.”
Another group site in East Baton Rouge Parish is already underway at the intersection of Victoria and Greenwell Springs roads near Airline Highway in north Baton Rouge. That site will accommodate 30 MHUs, the updated version of what used to be called FEMA trailers, and is 25% completed with an estimated project completion date of Dec. 28.
FEMA spokesman Kurt Pickering can’t say how long it will be before the MHUs are actually hauled to the site, hooked up and ready for occupancy.
“Every installation is a custom installation with its own unique challenges and time requirements,” he says.
The issue of group sites for MHUs has been controversial for months in what, essentially, is a classic case of “not in my backyard.” In October, the Metro Council passed a resolution approving four general locations for group sites. In addition to the Victoria Drive and South Choctaw locations, they approved sites on Gloria Drive near the Centerpointe Thruway and O’Neal Lane. But the resolution was nonbinding, and the exact location of the sites was sketchy. Some council members objected to group sites identified in their districts, citing concerns about traffic or lack of infrastructure. The cities of Central and Zachary, meanwhile, banned the development of MHU group sites in their cities altogether.
Wilson says he can’t remember if he voted for the resolution approving the sites, but he says at the time it was not clear exactly where the sites would be or if they would even be developed. More importantly, he says FEMA officials told council members they would be notified before locations were finalized and site work or construction began.
“At that meeting (in October) they said, ‘Councilman, if you have a problem with a location just let us know,’” Wilson says. “Well, no one communicated to me that they would be putting 64 units on this site.”
Wilson says he feels for flood victims who have nowhere to go and questions why FEMA isn’t working to place MHUs in already established commercial trailer parks.
Pickering says FEMA has identified 12 commercial parks in East Baton Rouge Parish and 17 in Livingston Parish with more than 300 pads among them, and that “all of the sites are expected to be utilized.”
The two MHU group sites planned for Livingston Parish are at La. 190 and Mayer Road, and at La. 190 and Watson Bend. A construction contract for the Mayer Road site, which would accommodate 28 pads, is expected to be issued before the end of the month. The Watson site, which would have 46 pads, is still under consideration.
—Stephanie Riegel
