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A representative with Caillouet Land Corp. has promised a “long, drawn-out, expensive legal battle” with Lafourche Parish Government if the parish’s beachfront development commission makes a move to expropriate any of the corporation’s Fourchon Beach property.
Last year, the South Lafourche Beachfront Development Commission ordered an appraisal of 44 acres, including a half-mile of beach, of Caillouet property.
The appraisal values the land at $275,000, an amount Jay Caillouet, a representative speaking on behalf of the corporation’s board, said is “significantly” flawed.
“If an effort is made by the parish to take any or all of the 44 acres, Caillouet is ready, willing and able to oppose it in all aspects,” Caillouet said. “You can expect a long, drawn-out, expensive legal battle. Win or lose, the cost to Lafourche Parish will be extremely high.”
The beachfront development commission has the authority to take property at fair-market value, provided there is a public need.
Caillouet said the motivation behind such a move would be to allow vehicular access to the beach, which he said would be hard to prove is a public need in the courtroom.
Two property owners control about nine miles of beach in Fourchon. Neither is currently allowing vehicular or pedestrian traffic on the property.
Edward Wisner Donation owns about eight miles of the beach and the Caillouet Land Corporation owns smaller parcels of land on either side of a parish road that disappears into the Gulf of Mexico.
Both landowners have blocked vehicular access to the beach, and since the 2010 BP oil spill, the beach has been closed to pedestrian traffic.
Landowners contend the beach is still inundated with oil from the Macondo prospect blowout and say the beach is littered with hazards remaining from the cleanup process.
“[Cleanup crews] used these metal stakes, and they put them out on the beach to hold the snare and hold the boom, and we’re finding them buried everywhere,” Cathy Norman, land manager with the Wisner Donation, told the Tri-Parish Times last year. “We just feel there is a lot of hazards on the beach, and we’re not willing to allow someone to go out there and get hurt.”
Caillouet said his organization was willing to negotiate an agreement with the parish, a sentiment that drew support from councilmen Lindel Toups, John Arnold and Michael Delatte.
Councilman Jerry Jones rhetorically asked where the beachfront commission would get the money to expropriate the property and asked if it was the best use of public funds to enter into a legal battle over ownership the beach.
The parties have haggled over the extent of public access to the beach for 20 years, Councilman Daniel Lorraine said. “There’s no way that they’re ever going to negotiate,” he said.
The land-use debate was reignited when the federal government announced last year it would move forward with studying the $446 million restoration project, which will fortify nine miles of the Caminada Headland with new sand in an area that can be reached via dry land through Lafourche Parish.
In the meantime, the state is slated to begin a $70 million portion of the restoration project this year.
Councilman Jerry LaFont agreed with Lorraine and said the economic impact of an open beach would outweigh the cost, saying it would “create millions.”
“It’s a moneymaker, not a liability,” he said.
Norman has said her organization is prohibited from selling its land by an anti-alienation clause included in the property acquisition agreement in 1914 but willing to negotiate a land-use agreement with the parish.
A representative with Caillouet Land Corporation told the Lafourche Parish Council last week his organization would pursue a drawn-out legal battle with the parish if the South Lafourche Beachfront Development Commission decides to pursue expropriation of its property. ERIC BESSON
