A day after Port of Greater Baton Rouge Director Jay Hardman told Daily Report that the controversy surrounding a proposed barge cleaning facility to be located near the Riverbend subdivision and a BREC park was overblown, Mayor Kip Holden fired off a letter to the port director today criticizing his defense of the facility.
“Your fiduciary duties … do not trump the safety and livelihood of the people of this parish,” reads Holden’s letter to Port Executive Director Jay Hardman. “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. This is outrageous and a total disrespect to the people of our community.”
While Hardman was defending the proposed facility on Monday, a pair of Metro Council members began moving to change the zoning of the proposed riverside site to stymie the project.
“This is just absolutely blowing this thing entirely out of proportion,” Hardman told Daily Report on Monday. “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.”
In his letter to Hardman, Holden questions how he can be so sure “that this is being blown out of proportion when the consequences are not fully known?”
Port Arthur, Texas-based Tubal-Cain Marine Services has been working for years on the facility, which would empty and clean barges then remove any residual chemicals by flare. The project has ignited controversy in the Riverbend neighborhood and is being actively opposed by Holden and LSU President F. King Alexander, as the proposed site is nearby LSU’s intramural fields. Last week, the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality agreed to postpone a public hearing on the matter, originally scheduled for Tuesday, until Aug. 18.
Councilmen John Delgado and Chandler Loupe filed an ordinance on Monday to change the zoning on the property from heavy industrial to heavy commercial. The measure would go before the Metro Council on Aug. 19. That’s one day after the DEQ public hearing but, presumably, before any permits are issued. Delgado says legally the city-parish is in its rights to change the zoning as long as the change takes place before final permits are issued.
“If the port is so financially strapped that it is willing to douse the hopes of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, then I suggest it is time for soul searching,” Holden’s letter to Hardman concludes. “You are a good man but this is a situation that we should say no to. The gifts of life, safety, peace and happiness are not negotiable.”
See a copy of Holden’s letter here.
—Steve Sanoski
