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PATTERSON — The Ward 5 and 8 Joint Sewage Commission has a new leader, and he’s no stranger to wastewater treatment.
Commissioners voted Monday to promote from within and hire Calvin Sanders, who for the past two years has worked as the protégé of their longtime Superintendent Mickey Carmouche. The long-time superintendent retired after 25 years of service Nov. 30.
A rate hike approved by the commission became a source of controversy in the fall, leading to pointed questions from the Berwick and Patterson council about the need for the increase. Now the parties seem to have agreed that they’ll work together to find funding for upgrades to an aging system.
Sanders has worked for a total of 12 years as a wastewater treatment operator for the city of Patterson, and the city of Franklin.
A native of Verdunville and a resident of Franklin, Sanders also holds an associate degree in electronics from Young Memorial.
He said his main objective as the new superintendent is to be pro-active when it comes to the maintenance aspect of the job.
“To actually run a facility where I can serve the general public and the whole region that will ensure the safety of what we put out into the environment, is my main objective,” he said.
“Safety is crucial for environmental concerns,” he said, noting that the joint sewage commission facility, which is located on Cotten Road in Patterson, treats, contains and releases sewage.
Sanders said his challenge however, is equipment. “We’re using old stuff that we continually try to make better.”
The commission is an intergovernmental entity created 41 years ago by the St. Mary Parish Council, the city of Patterson and the town of Berwick.
Its mission is to provide sewer services and to operate a regional sewage treatment facility which collects sewage from Calumet to Berwick.
In September, Commissioner Chris Cooper, then chairman, sent out letters to the parish municipalities announcing a rate hike for the entity beginning Oct. 1, stating they needed the money or else they would go broke.
Commission Chairman Michael Stewart said Monday, “I guess we kind of opened a can of worms when we asked for a rate hike a few months ago. Now all of the entities are watching what we’re doing.”
On Monday, Karen Sehon, the commission secretary-treasurer, presented a preliminary 2025-26 profit and loss budget for commissioners to review, which showed $1.3 million in revenues but $2 million in expenditures, resulting in a $664,523 deficit.
Sehon said the budget was based on the 2024-25 fiscal year and did not include any monies received from the rate hike, which she expects will be close to $360,000.
Commissioner Brandon Monceaux said that amount will only cover half of the deficit, and suggests the commission begin looking at expenditures, one of which is electricity, which last year cost the commission $286,000.
Cooper suggested that the commission look into obtaining more solar powered buoys because they take less energy to break down fecal matter and are more environmentally sound and safe.
Commissioner Tim Kyle said that up until recently, the joint commission was the only sewage plant in the United States to use a solar-powered buoy system that improves water quality without the need for chemicals or mechanical agitation. It uses a small amount of energy, less than watt, to modify the physical properties of water on a large scale.
Kyle explained that all of the joint commission’s system drains into one pond at the end of Cotten Road. He said that for years, it has been their practice to use mechanical aerators to break down pollutants.
But repair and upkeep of the aerators is costly, Sanders said, and to replace just one is $70,000.
Kyle said the mechanical aerators act like a giant blender to rotate the water in order to break down the solids, where the buoy transfers oxygen from the air, supporting aerobic bacteria to break down the solids.
“We only have one buoy, but one or two more would certainly help us in reducing the utility bill,” he said.
Glen Duncan, client support director with Providence Engineering, the commission’s consulting firm, said the commission has been using the buoy on a pilot basis from EM Fluids of Ontario, Canada, but now, the company wants to charge the commission a $5,000 monthly usage fee.
Cooper said that cost is minimal compared to the money the commission would save against utilities.
In other business, Stewart introduced newly hired Johnny Olivier, who will work with Sanders in operation of the sewage treatment plant.

=Louisiana officials plan to reopen a youth prison in April that was shuttered over a decade ago when it was declared inappropriate for young people. 
The state Office of Juvenile Justice plans to move 36 incarcerated youth to the old Jetson Center for Youth in Baker after some minor upgrades to buildings on the site. The interim facility is expected to help with overcrowding in the state’s youth prison system, agency undersecretary Jason Starnes said. 
“We desperately need some relief with our bed capacity issues,” Starnes told state lawmakers at a budget hearing last week.
The long-term plan for the Jetson site is to replace the existing facility with a brand new youth prison complex that will house up to 72 children and teenagers. It is expected to cost close to $70 million and would open during the 2027-28 state budget year.
In the meantime, the state will renovate existing buildings at Jetson to accommodate a dormitory, cafeteria, laundry facility and classrooms for the 36 youth who will arrive in the spring.
The money to make those buildings inhabitable will come from the budget for the new Jetson construction, said Matt Baker, director of the state Office of Planning and Facility Control, at the budget hearing. He did not say how much will be spent on the rehabilitation. 
“We’re going to do some cleaning up,” Baker said. “But essentially, we are doing as efficient of a renovation as possible so we can retain as much budget as we can for the new facility.”
Once the new building is opened, the state plans to tear down all the existing facilities on Jetson’s campus, Baker said.
When Jetson was closed in 2014, Gov. Bobby Jindal’s staff described it as old and obsolete. Some Jetson buildings first opened in 1948 and were not conducive to the therapeutic setting the juvenile justice system was trying to embrace at the time.
State officials also justified Jetson’s closure by saying it was difficult to secure because its campus is large and buildings are spread out over several acres. 
More recently, Louisiana used Jetson as its temporary women’s prison for nine years. The state hastily moved its incarcerated women to Jetson in 2016 after the women’s prison in St. Gabriel flooded and became unlivable. They were moved out of Jetson earlier this year when a new women’s prison opened at another St. Gabriel site. Advocates for incarcerated women complained about the condition of Jetson while the women were housed there, but juvenile justice officials say they intend to use a different building. 
Still, Starnes admitted most of the facilities at Jetson are in bad physical shape. 
“A lot of the facilities are very aged. [The buildings] are in very poor condition,” he said last week.
Legislators are also concerned about the impact to the surrounding communities. When Jetson was open, breakouts happened frequently and surrounding neighbors experienced waves of crime from the facility. At the time, the facility housed hundreds of incarcerated youth. State Sen. Regina Barrow, D-Baton Rouge, said she is concerned about new residential developments under construction near the Jetson site. 
 “We have to be good neighbors to the people we are going to be next to,” Barrow said.

B In Louisiana, our weather can turn on a dime — especially this time of year. One day will be cool and crisp; the next, unseasonably warm. Then, surprise! There’s a freeze in the forecast.
That’s why it’s important to stay ahead of the game. If you make a few preparations now, you won’t be caught off guard and scrambling to protect your plants when a cold front approaches.
Here are our tips for getting ready for freezes.
Keep plants healthy and hydrated
Taking good care of your plants and making sure they are in good health is one of the most important defenses against cold damage.
Keep plants thoroughly watered throughout the season. Cold fronts often are accompanied by drying winds that sap plants’ moisture levels, causing stress.
Damp soil does not freeze as readily as dry soil. So, when a freeze is on the way, make sure to water all of your plants — particularly container plants, which tend to dry out more quickly.
Refresh mulch
Mulch is a multipurpose tool in the landscape. It helps retain soil moisture, insulates roots from extreme temperatures, suppresses weed growth — and it looks great.
A 2- to-4-inch layer of mulch around plants will help keep them safe this fall and winter.
Do some research
Get online and search for information about the cold tolerance of plants in your garden. That way, you’ll know which plants need attention when temperatures plummet.
Citrus trees and tropical plants native to warmer climates are most vulnerable to freeze damage. But many other plants — including established trees and woody shrubs along with cool-season bedding annuals and many herbs — can handle chilly weather without any special care. You may still want to protect bedding plants, though, to prevent damage to their flowers and tender growing tips.
Move container plants
Even before a freeze appears in the forecast, you can preemptively move cold-sensitive plants that are in containers to warm locations where they can safely spend the fall and winter.
Otherwise, bring container plants of reasonable size indoors before temperatures drop to the freezing mark. If you don’t have space inside your home for your plants, moving them to an enclosed space like a garage, sunroom or porch is the next best thing. Place the plants as close to your home as possible — preferably along a south-facing wall, which will retain the most heat during the day.
Cover plants that can’t be moved
Not all of our tender plants can be moved to safety before a freeze. Some are planted in the ground, and others are in containers that are too big or heavy to lift.
For these plants, you can offer some protection with a covering material of some kind.
The gold standard is something called frost cloth. This white, woven material traps heat from the ground while remaining breathable. Frost cloth becomes a hot commodity when freezes threaten, so you may want to go ahead and pick up a roll or two from your local garden center to have on hand.
Items such as old blankets and sheets also work just fine. So do tarps and plastic sheeting — but you must remove these covers during the day. Solar heating will spike the temperature inside a closed tarp and burn the leaves and tender stems of a plant.
When installing any type of cover, make sure it completely covers the plant and goes all the way to the ground. Secure the material with sod staples or heavy objects such as bricks to maximize heat retention and keep wind from blowing off the cover. The key is to trap the earth’s ground heat — not just cover the top of the plant.
If you are covering a fragile plant, you can drive stakes into the ground to create a frame for the cover to rest on so it doesn’t crush delicate stems and leaves.
It’s OK to let some things go
Sometimes freeze prep is just too time and labor intensive. If you can only protect some plants and have to leave others to their own devices, don’t feel bad.
Prioritize plants that are most valuable — whether economically or sentimentally. Don’t stress over plants that are easy and inexpensive to replace.
Another thing to keep in mind is that, although tropical plants’ foliage is sensitive to freezing temperatures, many of the species we grow here in Louisiana — like elephant ears and gingers — are root hardy. Freezes will turn these plants’ leaves into mush, but their underground root structures will typically survive and send up new growth in the spring.