Flooding issues prompt move of training school to Baldwin site
It was announced at Wednesday night’s West St. Mary Port Commission meeting that the site of the much-deliberated, much-anticipated training facility will be moved from the port’s industrial park to the less flood-prone Baldwin campus.
Executive Director David Allain proposed the move following a threat from Louisiana Economic Development Association, to pull grant funds if the site for the prospective training facility was not moved out of such flood-proned an area as they consider the industrial park at the port.
The proposal was approved and even was said to afford advantages to the project insofar as the Baldwin campus is already utility-ready and will not require the same preparation as did the previous site.
A second proposal from the executive director’s report was also approved by the commission, to inspect the roofs of buildings at the Baldwin campus, to appraise the potential of load-bearing components that they should be capable of bearing the weight of an overlay of the roofs.
In other business, it was approved to participate in an intergovernmental replacement agreement, making more readily available the reimbursement of funds from the near complete Department of Transportation and Development project, which began work in its fourth phase this week.
Lastly, the meeting agenda was expanded to approve the repair of the air compressor from the DOTD project, to the tune of $24,000.
The compressor was found to have collected water through its intake, conjectured to have been perpetrated by recent storms, or from Hurricane Barry.
After some discussion, the repairs were agreed to be of immediate necessity, and were approved, with further investigations and claims possibilities as inevitable.
