[Clarification: Although Greg Gachassin owned Amazing Storage in 2008 when the EPA violations occurred, he is no longer the owner of that company. In October of 2011 Amazing Storage was purchased by Chris and Diane Ortego. Amazing Storage has had no relationship or financial connection to Gachassin since that time.]
It turns out that it's not just state ethics charges Lafayette real estate developer Greg Gachassin has been dogged by lately.
Earlier this year, Gachassin settled with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, shelling out $60,000 to settle a Clean Water Act violation at his Fountain View residential subdivision, part of a 34-acre development off Kaliste Saloom Road originally permitted as New Center Park. It certainly could have been much worse for his pocketbook, as he was also cited for Clean Water Act violations at Wingate by Wyndham, the hotel he developed in front of the subdivision, and for the adjoining construction site called Amazing Storage. The violations date back to 2008.
 |
|
|
The EPA fined Lafayette developer Greg Gachassin $60,000 for not having a plan to manage rain water runoff during construction of Fountain View, a 17-acre residential development behind his Wingate by |
EPA records obtained by IND Monthly indicate that Gachassin’s company, The Lauren Group, did not have a Storm Water Pollution Prevention Plan while he was developing the subdivision (in simple terms, a plan for managing rain runoff during construction), didn’t implement a plan and failed to perform required site inspections. “We contacted you at the time of the inspection, but you declined to accompany the inspectors onsite,” writes John Blevins, director of the EPA’s Compliance Assurance and Enforcement Division, in a July 18, 2008, letter to Gachassin.
In July of last year, EPA Public Affairs Specialist Carmen Assunto told IND Monthly that the statutory maximum penalty was $16,000 per violation per day. At the time no fines had been paid, Assunto said, and the EPA was still in negotiations with Gachassin.
Assunto said EPA conducted an inspection of the construction project on May 20, 2008, and observed unauthorized (unpermitted) discharges of pollutants from the site to a coulee that emptied into an impaired waterway (a body of water that does not meet the water quality standards of the Clean Water Act and the state.) “During the construction, there were other violations documented by the city of Lafayette that were independent of EPA’s inspection,” she said.
One would think that this developer, who is making millions as a development consultant on taxpayer funded projects in the Lafayette area, would know better.
Gachassin did not immediately return a phone call left at his office this morning.
Assunto noted that the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality had conducted an inspection on July 29, 2010, and found the site to be in compliance.
 |
|
| Greg Gachassin |
MAY 24 Blogger Robert Mann posts this entry about the Baton Rouge Chamber's recent report on Louisiana's higher education system. It's critical to economic development, and yet our system is facing a "funding crisis" with no way to resolve it, the report says. The Chamber says control of tuition and fees must be returned to the higher ed governing boards.
MAY 24 Here's a NBC33 story about Tyrann Mathieu. He has signed with the Arizona Cardinals, inking a $3 million, four-year deal. He gets a signing bonus of $265K, but gets another, larger bonus if he doesn't get cut from the team for doing drugs. The deal reportedly includes mandatory tests and meetings for the player.
MAY 24 Jarvis DeBerry posts here about the redonkulus rhetoric that would have us believe NOLA is a safe city with a murder problem. Maybe the city's crime stats don't compare with its murder stats because you can't manipulate a murder, he says: a dead body's a dead body. It just doesn't make sense, he says, and his readers agree: a poll asks if they believe the city is safe, and more than 90 percent say no.
MAY 24 Jindal administration officials announced Thursday that the privatization of public health care is going to cost a lot more than they budgeted for, the Advocate reports here. "I'm so surprised," said no one. Anywhere. The cost they're projecting now is more than $1 billion - a lot more than the $626 million budgeted for it. And, it's more than it cost the state to operate those hospitals. So why are we doing this again?
MAY 24 Blogger CB Forgotston ridicules the recent PR campaign by the state GOP in the wake of a legislative auditor's request to both major parties. The GOP (apparently unaware that the Dems got the same request) started yammering about being targeted because it had "killed" a tax increase. CB finds that laughable, but it's also pretty funny that the GOP was comparing this episode to the IRS scandal (Because the President has so much to do with our state auditor. Right?).
MAY 24 Politico details some recent fund-raising efforts by Sen. David Vitter, which have raised the question of his future political plans. This time, it is a $5,000 per head "bayou weekend" that includes "Cajun cooking" and an all-caps "alligator hunt," the story reports. Funds raised go to a super PAC that can spend money to support Vitter in federal or state races, the story points out.
MAY 24 The pink building on Royal in the quarter was sold at a sheriff's sale Thursday, this Picayune story reports. An injunction that would have halted the sale wasn't enforced because the family failed to post a $150,000 bond, the story reports. So the owner of the mortgages on the building bought it, for nearly $7 million. Now the feuding family will have to negotiate with that company to get a lease on the building that has housed their business for close to 60 years.
MAY 23 This post in Louisiana Voice tells us about a bill by a Winnsboro lege that would require all public high school students to take at least one Course Choice online class in order to graduate. (What?) Blogger Tom Aswell says it's a monument to "waste and corruption," especially in light of the problems he's exposed with the program in recent weeks. Idaho had a similar program, but voters removed it by a 2-1 margin, Aswell says.
Most Read
in case you missed it
Subscribe to this comment's feed
It's time we put this "developer" (i use that sarcastically, how do you call a guy who builds housing projects a developer
?) out of business and stop letting him use our funds as his piggy bank!