SLIDELL, La. — The St. Tammany Parish council unanimously passed an ordinance Thursday night that will require the utilities department to advise residents of the Cross Gates subdivision when water pressure drops below a certain level.
For years, residents have been complaining about St. Tammany Parish’s well-based water system in the Cross Gates area east of Slidell, which serves about 10,000 people.
Many of them told WWL Louisiana investigator David Hammer that the water was often brown and undrinkable and had given some of them skin rashes and made them sick on occasion.
Boil water advisories will now be mandated in the subdivision when water pressure dips below 20 psi.
This will only be in effect in Districts 9 and 13.
Last fall, the area in and around Cross Gates elected two new parish council members, David Cougle and Jeff Corbin. They wasted no time addressing the water-quality issue, offering an ordinance about it at their first council.
Cougle made fixing the water system a central tenet of his campaign to unseat incumbent Mike Smith and won by a nearly 2-1 margin. He says he wants to work more collaboratively with President Mike Cooper’s administration to restore residents’ faith in the water system.
Corbin is a retired chemical engineer, who said he’s ready to be hands-on with parish Utility Director Chris Tissue to make sure the system works properly.
“I think the ordinance helps alert the community that David and I are aware of the issue and doing what we can that the system is going to be operated in a safe manner,” Corbin said.
Cougle said voters made it clear to him while he was campaigning that fixing the water system was their top issue.
“I had a woman tell me, ‘I would never have moved here to Cross Gates, if I had known that this was the situation.’ And I don't want that,” he said. “People should be able to live in their neighborhood and feel confident that their water systems are going to work OK, and it's not going to make them sick, their kids sick or their animals sick.”