By the end of a contentious meeting, the Mamou Town Council adjourned with the prospect of adding meters to the town’s water system at some point in the future, due in part as a response to an order from the Louisiana Department of Health to improve the system.
After handling regular business at the start of the meeting, including hiring a part-time police officer, the Council heard from Dusty Bordelon, who wanted to lodge complaints against the Mamou Police Department.
Bordelon was allowed more than twenty minutes to try to describe his complaint, which involved conspiracies and personal vendettas against him from Councilwoman Leisa Deshotel and Police Chief Brent Zackery, as well as individual police officers.
However, Bordelon’s story seemed to confuse members of the Council, who couldn’t follow the narrative. Twice Councilwoman Jessica Fontenot asked Bordelon to make a specific complaint.
“I don’t understand the point of this,” she said.
Mayor Ricky Fontenot told Bordelon three times that he needed to get to the point.
“We’re not understanding,” he said. “You’re making it hard to follow you.”
Finally, Mayor Fontenot brought an end to the discussion and no action was taken.
The final action item – approving a resolution authorizing a loan application to improve the town’s water system – seemed routine at first. However, Councilman Freddie Matthew voiced objection to one of the improvements in particular: water meters.
Currently, Mamou’s water system does not use meters. Residents pay a flat-rate and can use as much water each month as they would like. According to Mayor Fontenot, the result is that Mamou uses a disproportionately large amount of water.
“We use the same amount of water as the City of Jennings,” he said, “but they have four times the amount of people that we do.”
The mayor said that there is no incentive for people to fix broken pipes, leaking faucets, or running toilets. At a previous meeting, he even said that some people use the town’s water to irrigate fields.
“It was a blast while it lasted,” Mayor Fontenot said, “but it can’t continue to go on.”
Mayor Fontenot noted that Mamou is one of only four municipalities in Louisiana that do not use meters.
Matthew was worried about the effect that metered water would have on resident’s monthly utility bill, causing it to go up.
“We’ll let the citizens make that decision,” Matthew remarked.
The mayor admitted that residents will probably pay more money, but after the other improvements are made, “the quality of the water will go up, too.”
The mayor said that before the meters are installed, there will be town hall meetings.
“We’re going to educate our citizens about this,” Mayor Fontenot said.
“Change is scary,” Councilman Robin Young said, “but it’s not always bad.”
The other improvements are necessary because the town has been cited on several occasions by the Dept. of Health for poor water quality. The department has ordered that certain changes be made, and it has given the town a deadline of December 2019 to submit a plan for improvement.
“The water is safe to drink,” assured Mayor Fontenot. “It just doesn’t meet certain criteria, like the fluoride and chlorine residual levels.”
He then explained that the problem with the water is related also to its color.
“Our water is yellow,” he said. “We’ve got old, galvanized pipes carrying the water, our filtration system is old, and we’ve got many other issues.
“The water is yellow, and people complain. But, the water is safe,” he assured.
Besides the meters, the other improvements include: digging two new wells, adding a new treatment plant, and replacing aging and broken water lines.
The project is estimated to cost about $4 million, which is why the Council needed to authorize a loan application. This particular application was with the Drinking Water Revolving Loan Fund. However, Mayor Fontenot noted that other funding options were being considered, too.
Mayor Fontenot also noted that most funding agencies would insist that meters are installed as part of the loan approval, even if the Town didn’t want to install them. It would become part of the requirements to qualify for the money to do the other improvements.
“We’ve got to make these improvements,” he said. “Our water system was originally designed to serve 600 customers. Now, we have more than 1,200 customers on the system.
“No one can disagree that we have a problem,” he added. “We’ve been fighting with this for years. We’ve had experts and tried different chemicals, but nothing has worked.
“Now, we don’t really have a choice with this order. We’ve got to get it done,” he continues.
Once the project is funded and approved, Mayor Fontenot said that it would take several years to complete, and it would be done in stages.
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NICHOLAS JAGNEAUX