Water district votes to dissolve

Published 6:00 am Thursday, April 5, 2018

At a special meeting Wednesday afternoon, Iberia Parish Water Works District 4 unanimously voted to recommended to dissolve their district due to lingering concerns of water supply and seat fulfillment. 

Legal counsel Dean Wattigny said that despite all of the efforts the district had made, it had become seemingly difficult to fulfill the purposes of supplying water to the Lydia and Grand Marais areas of the parish due to the supply and the cost of billing such a limited area of people to draw from. 

“This would be a recommendation to the Iberia Parish Council. You do not have the authority to abolish yourselves,” Wattigny said. 

The Parish Council voted in committee last week to move forward a resolution to abolish the district, but council members wanted the recommendation from the district members before any action was taken. The agreed solution has been to expand the lines of Water Work District 3, which operates out of Coteau, so that they would be able to cover the population in the parish served by District 4. 

“That would have to go to the Parish Council to change the boundaries and add members,” Wattigny said. 

Only three members of the district board attended the meeting, and problems of filling a quorum have been present at the past few meetings for the district. 

“We’ve been talking about this for the past few months, so I’ll vote for it,” district member Joseph Olivier said. 

The motion passed unanimously, and IPC member Eugene Olivier thanked the board for its service. 

“It was important to the people of the east side of the parish to have this, but unfortunately we couldn’t put the numbers together,” Olivier said. 

The resolution will now move to the Parish Council, where the final vote to abolish the district will take place.