Engineers drawing plans for new home foundations in some areas of Bossier Parish will be asked to alter their designs in order to ensure adequate support where high ground water levels have been determined.
Parish police jury members, in a subdivision committee meeting, agreed that for the next 90 days plans for foundations should be approved by parish engineers to ensure structural integrity. Jury members were told plan changes are necessary while further study of the ground water problems continue.
“Designers and builders take bore samples when they plan their subdivisions but we can’t assume soil bores from two years ago are the same as today,” Parish Engineer Butch Ford said. “We need time to pull information together. There need to be interim adjustments until we can come up with long term solutions.”
Ford said he and his staff have been in touch with the LSU Water Institute, engineers whose professional experience is in foundation design and with south Louisiana parishes that deal with high ground water levels.”
To date, no complaints about foundation problems have been received from subdivision residents in the area between the Red River and Red Chute Bayou. That’s the area, Ford said, where ground water levels that were eight to ten feet five years ago now stand at four to five feet.
“As long as there’s a Red River that remains high and continues to build up silt, the ground water isn’t going down. We have to find a solution that’s going to help protect the single largest investment many of our residents will make,” Ford said.
