The Big Picture

The cost of Baton Rouge ignoring its problems

STEPHANIE RIEGEL

A COVER STORY I wrote last month about the ongoing litter problem in Baton Rouge’s watershed has generated a lot of good feedback. It’s an issue everyone can rally around, even in these partisan times.

But while the story focused primarily on litter in the watershed, one important aspect of the piece has been largely overlooked and merits closer attention: Baton Rouge is in trouble with the Environmental Protection Agency and the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality for repeatedly failing to address deficiencies with its Stormwater Management Program. If it doesn’t fix things soon, it could be staring down the barrel of a federal consent decree.

The Stormwater Management Program is not to be confused with the stormwater master plan.

The latter is a high-profile $16 million study, currently underway by HNTB, to better understand drainage patterns and address flooding in the parish.

The former is a detailed technical plan that all municipalities are required to file with the EPA in order to receive a federal MS4—municipal storm sewer system—permit, which allows the discharge of stormwater runoff into the watershed.

In Louisiana, DEQ administers the program for the EPA and reviews all SWMPs to ensure they comply with the Clean Water Act on such things as how paints, chemicals, grease from restaurant fryers, oil from quickie lube shops, debris from construction sites and other toxins will be disposed of and monitored as they make their way into the watershed.

The problem with the SWMP is not new. In fact, Baton Rouge has been cited multiple times since 2008 by both federal and state agencies for deficiencies with its program. Four times in recent years, the city-parish has failed its MS4 audit. It is currently trying to negotiate a settlement with the Department of Justice.

Why has nothing been done before now? No one can say and it’s difficult to know how much trouble we’re potentially facing because officials with both the city-parish and the state refuse to discuss the matter, citing ongoing legal negotiations.

But publicly available documents on the DEQ website suggest there’s been a stunning lack of urgency about a problem that has been years in the making.

The most recent spate of issues dates to former Mayor Kip Holden’s administration. In April 2016, DEQ blasted the city-parish in a nine-page letter that listed multiple shortcomings with the SWMP. Among the areas of concern: construction site runoff, illicit discharge detection and elimination, commercial and industrial high-risk runoff, structural controls, municipal pollution prevention, and stormwater management plan development.

More specifically, the letter noted that the plan on the books was riddled with errors and inaccuracies, lacked critical details about controlling the discharge of pollutants into “already impaired” waters such as the Amite and Comite rivers, and failed to include the results of requisite water quality samples.

DEQ gave the city-parish until October 2017—more than a year— to address the issues and submit a new SWMP. But that deadline was extended at the city’s request, documents show.

When the city-parish finally submitted a new plan, nearly three years later, many of the problems cited in the 2016 letter remained unresolved.

In March 2020, DEQ sent another letter to the city-parish, saying Baton Rouge was still out of MS4 compliance. The letter went on to detail a complaint DEQ had investigated on Terrace Street near the Water Campus, where the improper disposal of construction debris was “allowing sediment to enter the municipal water system.”

Though the city-parish was not at fault for creating the problem, DEQ’s report said, it had failed to enforce the rules on the books. The report also noted, not incidentally, that the parish MS4 was under review by the DOJ “for violations discovered during an audit conducted by the EPA.”

Enforcement is a big part of the problem, according to environmental consultants, who are familiar with the situation and say Baton Rouge’s MS4 woes are one of the worst-kept secrets in their industry.

“The systems don’t work because there is no enforcement or compliance,” one local consultant told me.

Why no compliance? Why no enforcement? Why so many deficiencies in the plan and so little effort to address them?

Again, the city-parish cannot say, citing ongoing legal talks. But if the feds force a consent decree on the city-parish, things will change. They’ll have to.

It wouldn’t be the first time. There’s a long history of federal intervention in Baton Rouge, when local government is unwilling or unable to do the right thing on its own.

For nearly 40 years, the police and fire departments labored under a consent decree to remedy discriminatory hiring and promotion policies.

For nearly 60 years, the school system tangled with the courts and DOJ in a school desegregation case that resulted in a consent decree.

And for the past 20 years, ratepayers have been footing the bill for the BTRSSO Program, a now whopping $1.3 billion sewer system overhaul that resulted from a consent decree.

Federal intervention, as a rule, may be necessary and it usually can fix the problem, at least on the surface. But it often has unintended consequences and almost always has a higher price tag.

What will come of Baton Rouge’s current MS4 troubles remains to be seen. What’s maddening is that whatever the result, it’s bound to cost more than it would have if the city-parish had done things right on the front end and tended to the problem years ago.

REFLECTIONS

PERSONAL TRANSFORMATION IN 2021

This feature is a tribute by our publisher in honor of Business Report founder, Rolfe H. McCollister Sr.

LASTING CHANGE STARTS from the inside and moves outward and is called transformation. Transformation means “a profound change in form, from one stage to the next.” Resolutions are not bad, but come from an outward effort to change the inside. Most of the time, the changes are not lasting or fulfilling. Notice what 2 Corinthians 3:18 says about transformation: “But we all with unveiled face (veil removed in Christ-2, Corinthians 3:14), beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Spirit.” As a person beholds the glory of the Lord, which is the full weight of the person of the Father, Son, and Spirit; they cannot help but be progressively transformed, or changed. When we see God as He truly is, it changes our hearts to want to be more like His image from glory to glory. Notice the person of the Spirit’s role in transformation: “as from the Lord, the Spirit.” He is the source and power for real and lasting change. So personal transformation happens by beholding the Fathers Glory, and by the power of the Spirit, we are transformed into that same image, from glory to glory. May 2021 be a year of lasting transformation for us all. —COL Jeff Mitchell, retired Army State Chaplain.