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Gated Community Has Trash Problem

BOBBY ARDOIN

Editor/Consulting Writer

Weekly garbage disposal could soon become a problem for approximately 150 residents living inside a gated St. Landry Parish rural subdivision.

Several residents from the Hidden Hills area approached Parish Council members Wednesday night and requested assistance in order to maintain regular weekly garbage pickup for nearly 50 rural households.

According to presentations made by those who spoke on the issue during a Public Works Committee meeting, dumpsters located along a parish road and used for Hidden Hills garbage disposal, may have to eventually be removed.

One Hidden Hills landowner has apparently asked parish officials to relocate the dumpster due to the accumulated noxious smells and potential sanitary issues that involve rotting garbage, according to several parish officials.

Parish president Jessie Bellard told the Committee that apparently the dumpster is also possibly illegally positioned on a parish right-of-way,

Photographs presented at the meeting show two dumpsters that are partially resting along a roadway that leads to the Hidden Hills entrance gate.

The photographs also indicate portions of the dumpsters protruding onto the paved roadway leading the the gate that allows residents to enter and leave the subdivision.

Hidden Hills is located southeast of the Sunset-Grand Coteau area just north of the St. Landry-Lafayette Parish boundary line.

Public Works chairman Wayne Ardoin said the roads inside Hidden Hills are privately maintained.

Bellard said that he plans to examine parish surveyors maps in order to obtain a clearer understanding of whether the dumpsters are actually located along a parish right of way on a presumably public road.

Joseph Abraham, one of several Hidden Hills representatives who addressed the issue during the meeting, acknowledged that the dumpster issue is presently without a seemingly workable solution.

Abraham also questioned the timing of the issue.

“Why has this become a problem all of a sudden? What is the risk involved? Those dumpsters have been there for decades,” Abraham said.

Bellard said that despite the dilemma, the parish may have no other choice than to look for another location for the dumpsters.

“You don’t own the dumpsters or the property,” Bellard told Abraham.

Richard LeBouef, executive director of the St. Landry Parish landfill, offered the assistance of the parish Solid Waste Commission.

Residents who spoke during the meeting reminded the Council and LeBouef that the sales tax proposition that formed the Commission nearly 40 years ago, mandates the Commission is responsible for collecting all the garbage in St. Landry. 

Abraham said property values in Hidden Hills have risen in recent years, adding more revenue for the parish.     

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