Besides tracking the movements of Team Ward in Louisiana the wing of the family under former Jefferson Parish Councilman Butch Ward has been active in Mississippi via a track of wetland they own south of I-10 between the Canal Road and Highway 49 exits. The interchange at US 49 is on 16th section land and it is fully developed so it is logical the frontage on I-10 going west to Canal Road would be the natural path for more commercial development. MDOT took the entire piece of land from Ward for the new port connector road that is under construction and both Team Ward and the City cried foul taking the USACOE to federal court to oppose taking the entire parcel. Our prior posts on this topic in chronological order from oldest to newest can be found here, here, here, here, here and here.
I mention all this because Anita Lee is reporting for the Sun Herald that the Gulfport City Council did not take the Highway 49 commercial corridor away from the historically black city council district to include in District 7 as originally proposed in a deal that would have benefitted Butch Ward as district 7 council person Cara Puchu is pro development. The current city council person for the area is Ella Holmes Hines who has constituents in the Turkey Creek area that have flooding problems that would certainly be worsened by Team Ward style “fill and build” development.
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Stumbled across this old EPA document re Ward Lumber property in Gretna La being part of a Brownfield (sp?) project in 2001 or so. Interesting. Am I reading this correctly that they polluted the location and then claimed not to have the $$$$ to clean it up? Were they fined? So many questions.
http://nepis.epa.gov/EPA/html/DLwait.htm?url=/Ado…