– The St. Martin Parish Council approved rezoning property next to the Greenpoint Landfill as Industrial 3 use over the continued protest of resident David Pugh, who spoke out against allowing the land to be used for a recycling transfer station.
Pugh raised several objections for making the zoning change from Light Industrial to restricted Heavy Industrial use, and listed what he said were six to eight other available properties in nonresidential areas that could be used for the site, including Martin Mills, property on La. 92 with access to U.S. 90 and the Spanish Trail Industrial Park with empty buildings, ramps and loading docks, and acres of land for sale, and the SMEDA Industrial Park.
“You don’t even have to get into the crowded area of Cade,” he said. “You’d be way away from it.”
He also raised concerns about the use of the property being changed despite restrictions being placed on it by the parish council, similar to multiple expansions of the Greenpoint Landfill despite objections by neighboring residents.
“I feel like a broken record,” Pugh said. “Here we go with this Industrial 3 thing again. I never thought we’d do it again. When you give people this Industrial 3 (zoning), it opens the door to so many things. Look what happened with Greenpoint. It started out to fill up a hole, then they end up with a mountain (of garbage), buy some more land, increase that into a mountain bigger than that. Then the DEQ gave them a permit to modify the way they do things, so now it’s going on for another five years. And now we want to bring in all kinds of garbage trucks all day long bringing in recyclables.”
Once the property is approved for I-3 usage, he said, it could be used as a junkyard or for solid industrial waste, an incineration site, infectious waste site, or disposal of non-hazardous oilfield waste.
“Why do they need 12 acres, and why does it have to be right next to people’s homes?” Pugh asked.
Pugh asked what would happen if Acadiana Waste came back to the council and said they wanted to expand their services into other areas beyond what the council restrictions were to include things like tire disposal or making mulch out of wood products.
“Think about this, if the parish says, no, that’s not in your rules. It’s not in the parameters we gave you,” Pugh said. “They’ll say, well you already gave
ZONING CHANGES – Local resident David Pugh speaks out against a zoning ordinance change that would allow Acadiana Waste Services to set up a sorting and baling operation for recycled metal and paper products on U.S. 182 next to the Greenpoint Landfill site. The parish council voted 7-1 to approve the zoning change. (Chris Landry)
us I-3. We’re going to take you to court. We want to use this I-3 (zoning) for I-3 purposes. Can you promise that you would win that, or would they get their way?”
Parish attorney Lee Durio said the I-3 designation was not being granted across the board, but was being limited at the Planning and Zoning Board’s recommendation to being used only as a recycling transfer station with separation of products and baling them to be shipped to recycling centers.
Zoning
Any other use would have to be approved by the Planning & Zoning Commission and the parish council.
But Pugh said that the parish had refused to grant video poker zoning for one applicant who then went to the state and got approved for a video poker license and opened up his business anyway because the former parish president said the parish would lose in court if the man sued.
Durio said the parish can’t stop someone from exercising their rights to determine what they want to do with their land and could only decide on what uses the land is suitable for. After that it’s up to a judge to decide, he said, with the parish defending whatever decisions the council made according to its ordinances.
“That’s what I thought,” Pugh said. “You can’t predict what’s going to happen with I-3. You can put all the fence guardrails you want, you open that box, you’ve got I-3. They’re going to come back for something else. What if they want to make a deal with the guy next door? What if they say, look, he’s running out of room. Maybe we can use all these acres in the back of our buildings (for use as a dump site).”
Council Chairman Chris Tauzin said that the council would approve it as I-3 with restrictions for use only for sorting, baling and shipping out recyclables, not for any other use.
“The zoning regulation, even though it’s I-3, doesn’t give them the proper authority to do that (change the use),” Tauzin said. “They’d have to come back to Planning & Zoning and do the procedure all over again.
“We get sued every day. That’s what they make lawyers for. That’s out of our control. But I can tell you this, the only ordinances in the parish that can’t be trumped by state or federal government is our zoning ordinances.
“With the regulations that Planning & Zoning issued … it’s going to be a transfer station for cardboards, plastics and that’s about it. It’s not for batteries. It’s not for tires. If they want to do anything like that, they’d have to go back to Planning & Zoning and start all over from scratch.”
“And if you say no, this expert lawyer here just said the judge can say you’ve got to give it to him,” Pugh said.
Tauzin said anyone could sue someone for any reason, but it doesn’t mean they’d win.
“Don’t open the box,” Pugh said. “Don’t open the I-3 box. (Then) you guarantee you won’t have it. There’s better places for this. I just named eight of them, 10 of them.
Pugh also raised the issue of the number of trucks going into and out of the site daily, with 20-25 trucks planned daily and with hopes of expanding to 40-45 trucks per day at some point. That higher number would mean a truck either entering or leaving the facility 10 times an hour, or every 6 minutes during work hours.
Property values also would go down for residents, he said.
“Those poor people next to them are not going to get any rest at all,” Pugh said.
“This does not belong near people’s houses. This belongs in an industrial park, not here.”
Pugh said the zoning board did not hear the full story as Acadiana Waste only said it planned to have 20-25 trucks a day entering the facility, but told the council at its February meeting that it hoped to increase that to 4045 trucks. The company also asked for permission to go beyond normal working hours —8 a.m.-5 p.m. five days a week — to possibly another hour or two after 5 p.m. if needed, or on Saturdays if needed. Pugh said that would give people living in the area no rest from the noise of trucks going in and out of the facility.
Councilwoman Carla JeanBatiste. whose district the site is located in, said she had promised to not support any other landfills in the area, but said she had visited a similar facility in Opelousas.
“This is not a recycling plant,” she said. “It’s strictly for sorting and packaging, and so I want to make sure we understand that.”
The types of materials sorted at the facility will be restricted, she said, and if the place is sold, it will revert ot I-1 zoning and the new owners would have to go to Planning & Zoning and the council for rezoning. She also said she checked to make sure there was no affiliation between Greenpoint and Acadiana Waste, and was satisfied there is no connection.
JeanBatiste made a substitute motion on the matter to grant the zoning change but torestrict the facility to normal operating hours. The measure passed by a 7-1 vote with Tangie Narcisse voting no. Chris Courville was absent from the meeting.
Narcisse said she had concerns because of the property values in the area going down with businesses like the recycling transfer station moving into the area, and because people in the area had voiced their concerns about having the facility move in.
