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Landowner explains nighttime activity at River Road construction site

Landowner explains nighttime activity at River Road construction site

LAKE CHARLES, La. (KPLC) – The Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) is investigating a complaint this week about what some residents believe is illegal overnight dumping.

As suspicious as it looks, the landowner has another explanation.

The sight of dump trucks transporting garbage late at night will seem suspicious to many.

Outside of River Road it may have looked that way, but it was to help the Port of Lake Charles move the railroad tracks to Sallie Street from a little west of Lake Street to the port.

Officials say the work needs to be done at night to avoid disruption to trains running during the day.

The landowner of the River Road property, Stanley Caldarera, explains that he has allowed a port contractor to use his property as space.

“They have the Sallier project where they’re moving the train tracks from the south side to the north side and they can only do it at night via train. We gave them space to use and it was supposed to be done by 10, 11 o’clock, but they got a little bit more involved than they should have and it went into the night,” Caldarera said.

Caldarera says he is developing the land and plans to build four exclusive homes there in a development called Our Time Properties.

“You want to keep building it through the flood elevation, trying to bring it up to FEMA’s requirements,” which he said are now 10 feet.

“They will be sold to individuals, individual lots that people can buy with a partition across the street on the water side so they can have a house on one side and a boathouse on the other,” Caldarera said.

Many in the community remember that in the 1960s and possibly the 1970s, the area south of River Road was used for a landfill. Meanwhile, the port management expects that work on the tracks will continue for another day or so.

“It (the dump) was actually where you turn onto River Road, all the way going west to the river, on the south side of the road, it was a dump at the time,” he said. “At that time, the city dumped here, the city, the state and the parish came and dumped all the stuff here. And this is one of the remnants, the tree behind me that I dug up, so it’s all buried.”