Landowner cancels plans for controversial lake in Bayou Gauche

Bayou Gauche community residents had barraged the St. Charles Parish Planning Commission with questions, a town meeting was scheduled to address them and then landowner Cecil Sumners withdrew his permit application Tuesday for the lake that drew all this attention.

Sumners said cost was the reason for the move.

“I learned a few days ago that the state’s Division of Archaeology is requiring that a Phase I archaeological survey be done on the property,” he said in an Aug. 18 email to the Planning Commission. “This is due to a 1982 survey … done along that portion of the extant Grand Bayou that lies about a mile from my proposed excavation site along Hwy. 306. This type of survey carries a rather large price tag and makes my small borrow pit (5 acres) economically unfeasible.”

Additionally, Sumners states: “Although the uses for our property have been diminished, I don’t plan to abandon my quest for a viable alternative for the property and look forward to working with you in the future.”

The North Carolina property owner did not specify those uses.

“I ventured into developing part of the land a couple of years before Katrina because people in the area had been calling me about lots for their homes,” he said. “Our development is located along Grand Bayou Road where most of the lots have been sold.”

Parish Councilman Paul Hogan, who requested and got approval from the Planning Commission to table the application and then hold an Aug. 25 town meeting, confirmed Tuesday the meeting has been cancelled.

Sumners’ permit application was to excavate for dirt and minerals, and then make a lake for a residential development on property in the area.

Property owners adjacent to Sumners’ 439-acre site, who received notices from the parish Planning and Zoning Department about the project, filled the Council Chambers for the Aug. 6 Planning Commission and extensively questioned the project.

After nearly two hours of residents’ comments, Hogan requested and got approval to hold the town meeting to address concerns about potential flooding, stagnant water, damage to the recently repaved Bayou Gauche Road and numerous safety issues.

Sumners told the Planning Commission that his special permit focused on minerals extraction (clay removal), but turning the remaining hole into a lake was a part of a future planned residential development that got derailed by Hurricane Katrina. Sumners said he planned to resume that project with completion of the Sunset levee.

Also, in the Aug. 28 email to the Planning Commission, Sumners, president of Sunset Ridge Development LLC, states that his family had been involved in “helping build the Bayou Gauche area since the mid-50’s (Smith Green Acres) and I was looking forward to continuing in that tradition by helping with the levees.”

 

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