The Livingston Parish Infrastructure Committee met April 15, 2026 to open early discussions on two initiatives that could reshape how the parish handles its roads and sewer systems for years to come.
The committee, made up of councilmembers Erin Sandefur, Ricky Goff, Lonnie Watts, and John Mangus, discussed initiatives that are not set to take effect immediately but will require ongoing review before implementation.
The most extensively discussed item on the agenda was a future Road Classification Criteria Manual to help classify roads across the parish. As it stands, state and parish roads are already classified by the state itself using an overarching classification system. However, roads considered smaller than the state's "minor collector" classification are lumped together as "local" within the system.
This proposal considers taking those "local" roads and further classifying them into smaller sub-groups by studying their street data, including construction requirements, engineering measurements, location, and road traffic information.
These classifications could also help with the approval or development of sidewalks for certain streets, since a clear, all-encompassing design and engineering guideline would be established in this manual for any road built once the manual is active and, eventually, for any roads built before it became active.
This manual is also intended to support the committee's Major Street Plan, which seeks to eliminate dead-end roads and ensure land is set aside when new roads are built, in case they need to be expanded in the future as the parish grows.
The committee then discussed using the council's existing street ordinances to establish a baseline for the classification manual, which they will then revise, re-discuss, and update as time passes and they are able to undertake a parish-wide traffic study of the roads. However, this proposal is simply the beginning of an idea and has no fully fleshed-out processes or guidelines to be implemented immediately, according to the committee.
Afterward, the committee discussed taking neighborhood sewer systems under the parish's maintenance and oversight.
When roads are developed, the sewer systems built along with them are overseen by various other companies, which then contract other sewage plants to handle the waste. This can be rather disorderly because different areas across the parish are served by different treatment plants, which are then operated by different companies.
As a result, the committee discussed plans to begin implementing a parish-wide sewer system by requiring road developers to adhere to sewage pump and infrastructure guidelines, so that maintenance is easier and the council can own the new local sewage systems. This would set up a baseline, tying together sewage systems across the parish under the council's jurisdiction and funneling them to a main sewage treatment plant, which would eventually grow into an all-encompassing, parish-wide sewage system that can be overseen and expanded upon locally.
During this meeting, the committee members discussed this proposal as a precursor to future talks on the logistics, requirements, and possible plans for it.
