Calcasieu Parish police jurors approved a resolution last week to submit two requests for state capital outlay money which one official said would supplement funding for projects included in a plan to expand sewer services for the parish’s unincorporated areas.

One request includes $18 million for a wastewater treatment and transport system in Moss Bluff.

The other request is $26.4 million for gravity sewer trunk mains and pumping stations for south Lake Charles and Carlyss.

If the state approves the requests, the parish would have to put up a 50 percent match for each project. That means $9 million of the Moss Bluff project would be locally funded, along with $13.2 million for the project in south Lake Charles and Carlyss.

“It is our hope both those applications will be approved; that way it propels us forward on the plan,” said District 1 Police Juror Shannon Spell.

The projects are part of an estimated $110 million plan to expand sewer services in unincorporated areas of Calcasieu. The plan — approved by police jurors earlier this month — would be funded by a combination of parish gambling funds, state capital outlay money, and funds from a proposed 20-year, quarter-cent sales tax. Voters in the unincorporated areas will decide the fate of the sales tax April 5.

The sewer expansion plan also calls for the Police Jury to reduce the 1.5-cent road and garbage collection tax levied in Wards 2-8 to 1.25 cents for the remaining seven years of the term. Ward 1 residents do not pay that particular tax.

(American Press Archives)