Enforcement and Monitoring

Enforcement and monitoring is responsible for field investigations, technical reporting, enforcement and monitoring to the division.

FIELD OFFICES

Enforcement and Monitoring has field offices in New Orleans, Houma, Lafayette, and Lake Charles. There are two staff members in New Orleans and Houma offices and one each in the Lafayette and Lake Charles Offices. To view maps showing the parishes for which each field investigator is responsible, and the address and contact information for each office, click here. We have recently added a field staff member in the Baton Rouge office to assist in those parishes nearest to Baton Rouge (Areas 1, 3, and 5) and to work those areas outside the Coastal Zone but within the Coastal Wetlands Conservation Plan Zone. The CMD staff located in the field offices are available to assist people with questions about permitting or the Coastal Program in general.

ENFORCEMENT AND MONITORING

The Compliance Branch also performs enforcement and monitoring for the OCRM. Any activity that is not consistent with the Coastal Program can be considered a violation of the program. Enforcement cases are usually caused by someone initiating a project without a permit or exceeding the scope of their permit. If someone fails to comply with the conditions of their permit, it goes from a monitoring function to an enforcement case. To bring cases into compliance, CMD is statutorily authorized to issue administrative fines, and/or assess mitigation or the costs of mitigation, suspend, modify or revoke an existing permit, require restoration of the site, or seek relief through the civil court system.

Staff members perform thorough monitoring of coastal use permits for any required mitigation, restoration, or other obligations included in the language of the permit authorization. The field investigators monitor their respective areas by vehicle, boat, and regularly contract a flight to get an aerial view. This way they stay apprized of the projects in their area as well as discover violations. Selected projects are designated for follow-up field inspections and the project evaluated relative to its permit authorization. Appropriate staff tracks all permits that require mitigation to ensure satisfactory completion of the mitigation requirements. Mitigation projects and mitigation areas are also tracked in a GIS system. To ensure compliance, we also track, in a database, all projects for which the permits require submission of photos, reports, as-built plats, restoration requirements and other obligations. If the information is not provided , it becomes and enforcement issue.