Proposed pool law requiring fences fails in Terrebonne

A proposed ordinance requiring Terrebonne Parish homeowners to erect fencing at least 4 feet high around their pools failed to pass at last Wednesday’s Terrebonne Parish Council meeting.

A substitute motion supporting a parish-wide pool-safety awareness campaign did pass, however.

At the meeting, the council listened to opponents and a supporter of the proposed ordinance, which applies to above-ground and in-ground pools and hot tubs more than 2 feet deep.

“The ordinance is an invasion of property rights,” said Houma-Terrebonne Regional Planning Commission member Alex Ostheimer, who favored the pool-safety awareness campaign.

“Don’t mandate private citizens spend money on their own property,” he told the council prior to the vote. “If pools are considered an attractive nuisance (for children), then bayous and canals must be fenced.”

Councilwoman Teri Cavalier, the main proponent of the ordinance, responded, “We can’t do anything about a bayou. A pool is a decision you make.”

At the council’s Feb. 11 Policy, Procedure and Legal Committee meeting, Cavalier said, “As a property owner, I don’t like what to be told what to do with my property, but we need to protect children.”

“I have people in my district not doing the right thing,” she said. But because of the lack of an ordinance, “I can’t do anything.”

Craig Luke of Houma, speaking at Wednesday’s meeting, also supported a safety-awareness campaign.

“I ask you not to pass the ordinance,” he said. “It’s allowing government to reach too far into the private lives of the citizenry.”

The council then listened to the aunt of Hayden Davenport read a poem about the 2-year-old boy written by his mother. On September 18, Davenport accidentally drowned in a swimming pool. His aunt presented the council with a list of more than 900 signatures of people supporting the pool-safety ordinance.

“I think about how she won’t be able to hold him again,” she said about the boy’s mother.

“If someone has a pool and no fence, should that person be held financially responsible?” she asked. “No. But could that person live with himself? It was a horrible, preventable accident.”