Keith Bales, the public works director for Covington, requested the city commission accept a bid from JTM Smith Construction for a land stabilization project near the Pointe Benton subdivision at Tuesday’s caucus meeting. The bid was added to the consent agenda for the April 25 legislative meeting, meaning it’s likely to pass.
The project will focus on a stretch of land in the hills between Pointe Benton Lane and Center Street in the Peaselburg neighborhood. Bales said it would extend an existing retaining wall designed to prevent land slippage caused by flooding, both from rain and sewer overflow. No residents from the development spoke at the meeting.
“We received three bids,” Bales said at the meeting. “Smith Construction came in at the lowest at $358,750.”
A representative from JTM Smith Construction and documents from the city confirmed this figure.
The Pointe Benton development and the Peaselburg neighborhood around the project is especially prone to flooding due to its particularly hilly geography, which facilitates heavy run-off. Similar problems with land slippage and flooding is common throughout the region.
The problems specific to Peaselburg extend as far back as the Pointe Benton subdivision’s initial development in 1987. Several lawsuits and developer changes have taken place over the years. As such, the stabilization project is one in a series of mitigation measures enacted by the city and other infrastructural organizations. Notably, in 2020 the city in partnership with Sanitation District 1 completed a set of sewer system updates to curb basement flooding.
“This will not eliminate the flooding up there, but it will reduce the flooding,” said former City Commissioner Michelle Williams in a press release from May of 2020.
One commissioner inquired into the construction process.
“Now that’s very wooded there. Is there going to be a lot of tree demolition that’s going to happen?” City Commissioner Nolan Nicaise asked. “Is there tree replanting?”
Nicaise, who has a background in environmental science, was particularly concerned that the removal of trees could actually make the hills between the roads more prone to slippage as it would deprive the soil of root growth, which tends to have a stabilizing effect.
Bales responded by saying that most of the clearing that would take place would be brush and other smaller growth, including a lot of invasive species. Although Nicaise seemed satisfied with this answer, he stayed after the meeting to discuss the project further with Bales.
The commission will vote on the bid along with the rest of the items on the consent agenda during their legislative meeting on April 25 at Covington City Hall.
If the commission accepts the bid, construction will begin shortly thereafter–before the end of spring, according to a representative from JTM Smith Construction. The representative predicted the project would take somewhere between six to eight weeks to complete.