The controversy over a proposed barge cleaning facility that would be located on the riverfront near the Riverbend subdivision and BREC’s Farr Park Equestrian Center park continued to heat up this week.
After Port of Greater Baton Rouge Director Jay Hardman told Daily Report on Monday that the controversy was overblown, Mayor Kip Holden fired off a letter on Tuesday to the port director criticizing his defense of the facility.
“Just because the port owns the land, you are willing to sacrifice the best interest of the citizens of Baton Rouge for a $120,000 a year contract the port entered into with Tubal Cain,” reads Holden’s letter. “This is outrageous and a total disrespect to the people of our community.”
While Hardman was defending the proposed facility, a pair of Metro Council members began moving to change the zoning of the proposed riverside site to stymie the project. A resolution to that end will be discussed at the council’s meeting on Wednesday next week.
“This is just absolutely blowing this thing entirely out of proportion,” Hardman told Daily Report of the controversy over the facility, which Texas-based Tubal-Cain Marine Services has been planning for years and is now seeking permits for. “I’ve never seen anything like it. We’ve always been very sensitive to nearby residents (when considering potential lease offers on this property), and we’ve said no before to potential tenants. But I would have never thought this operation, with the modern technology they use, would cause this much controversy. I’m just taken aback by it.”
On Thursday, Baton Rouge Area Chamber President and CEO Adam Knapp told Daily Report that BRAC has reached out to Tubal-Cain to suggest alternate sites for its project. But a Tubal-Cain executive says his company has had limited communications with BRAC on the subject and isn’t interested in talking about other sites.
“I guess one phone call and one email could be construed as ‘advising the company to find new locations,’” says Randy Cooper, operations manager for Tubal-Cain. “However, we are not working with them on this.”
Also this week, after a roughly two-year effort, organizers of the city of St. George incorporation effort announced that they will not file a legal challenge to a recent ruling by a Baton Rouge judge that effectively killed the effort—but they say the fight is far from over.
“Pay close attention to those who cheer this as a victory,” Lionel Rainey III, spokesman for the Committee for the Incorporation of the City of St. George, says in a prepared statement. “Nothing has been won. All they succeeded in doing is temporarily delaying the democratic process. … Our opponents claim to have a desire to bring people together. By fighting to deny people the right to vote, these groups have driven a permanent wedge. They have not poured water on this fire. They poured gasoline on it.”
