‘Change of heart’ for Jeanerette’s sewer project
Published 2:24 pm Friday, June 27, 2025
In what Mayor Carol Bourgeois Jr. called a “change of heart,” the Jeanerette Board of Alderman of Alderman voted to change the scope of the town’s sewer project during a special meeting held Thursday night.
The project, which has been a contentious issue for several months and is one of the biggest Jeanerette projects in recent memory, was going to simply improve the current sewer plant after a decision made earlier this month.
That decision was only made after the initial agreement, which was supposed to create a wetlands assimilation sewer system and create a new sewer plant, was discarded after too many complications arose on the logistics of the project.
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But after research done in the past few weeks, Bourgeois said the board had decided to revert back to the idea of a new sewer plant after the possibility of losing funds that had already been acquired from state capital outlay, the Department of Environmental Quality and the Water Sector Commission could have possibly been lost.
“We looked at it further and we certainly don’t want to lose those funds,” Bourgeois said.
Mayor Pro Tem Tia Simmons added that potential fines could be issued if a new sewer plant is not built, since DEQ had already issued findings that the current plant is not in compliance and further action has not been taken due to the fact that DEQ was assured that a new sewer plant was in progress.
“We don’t want to cut our nose off to spite our face,” Simmons said. “We know the DEQ has put us out of compliance, the reason they’re not fining us daily is because they’ve been told we’re building a new sewer plant.”
“We need to do this because if we don’t, when DEQ starts fining us very high numbers a day, that would bankrupt everybody.”
With engineers of the project attending, the board settled on a project schedule that will hopefully see construction beginning in early 2026. The board also worked out the decommission of the current sewer plant as well.
“We’re out of options,” Simmons said. “This is our last option to get this done.”
