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Giles Island lawsuit settled
The Fifth District Levee Board has settled a lawsuit filed by Bancroft Enterprises over 78.56 acres at Giles Island.
The settlement was reached on Jan. 11 when the levee board agreed to pay Bancroft $383,228.90 for rights-of-way to the property for enlargement of the Mississippi mainline levee.
Levee Board Superintendent of Operations Jason Trichell said the Giles Island acreage is the most feasible location to obtain soil needed for building up the levee. Otherwise, he said the contractor would be forced to haul dirt from greater distances, increasing the cost of the project.
Bancroft filed suit against the levee board in June 2011 in federal court in Jackson, Miss. Speed Bancroft is President of Bancroft Enterprises, located in Monroe.
Trichell said the levee board sought to resolve the suit because it feared the litigation could delay present work to raise the mainline Mississippi River levee from Morville to north of Vidalia in Concordia Parish.
Fifth District Levee Board President Reynold Minsky said last summer the levee work at Giles Island is "the lowest point in Concordia we've got left to raise."
The property is located on Mississippi soil but approachable by land from Louisiana. Giles Island was formed during a Corps of Engineers project in 1933 to excavate a cut-off from the Mississippi River above Vidalia at Giles Cut-Off, also known as Cowpen Bend Cut-Off.
The levee board originally offered Bancroft fair market value of $246,286 ($3,235 per acre) for the 78.56 acres. Trichell said Bancroft rejected the offer in late April 2011 and proposed a counter offer a month later of $555,000.
The two parties have been working to resolve the issue since that time, Trichell said.For the full story, subscribe to the The Concordia Sentinel's NEW E-Edition! |
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