The Town of Kentwood animal shelter is under fire from The Humane Society of Louisiana after the group found no sewerage system, a pile of waste that had built up for years and several dogs that were too weak to stand.

The Humane Society detailed all of that in a report that also called for the parish to close the shelter or take it over. They are seeking to sign an agreement with Tangipahoa Parish Animal Control to take over services. The report was submitted to Kentwood Mayor Harold Smith and presented in front of the city council.

The group says that the shelter, which houses dogs in eight kennels and does not service cats, failed to meet state or national shelter standards and violated multiple city and state laws.

The report detailed problems with both the structure of the building and the manner in which the animals were treated. The shelter lacks any kind of drainage system and does not have a septic tank, while the building itself was not designed to house animals, the report says. This leads to a build up of waste that has accumulated for years, the report says, and is heaped off to one side of the kennel.

The group says that the building is poorly ventilated, damp and poorly lit only exasperates the problem.

"These conditions combine to make for a 'perfect storm' to spread disease and infection," said Jeff Dorson, executive director of the Humane Society, in a press release. "There is no way to humanely house animals under these primitive conditions.”

Two puppies that were taken from the shelter were “barely alive” and too weak to stand when shelter inspectors seized the animals, the group said. The puppies did not receive adequate food and were “ravenous” when the inspectors took them from the shelter. Dogs were suffering from parasites, mites and heartworms.

This dog shelter in Kentwood was heavily criticized in a recent report by the Humane Society of Louisiana.

“"We suspect that these puppies would have died over the weekend at this shelter,” Dorson said. “We hope that they will be the last dogs to be impounded at the Kentwood shelter.”

Also detailed in the report is that the shelter failed to meet state adoption law standards. The law states that animals must be sterilized 30 days after the date of its adoption; however, the report says the law was “never applied in Kentwood.” It adds that dogs were also given or passed away, usually to family and acquaintances of manager David Sellers. The required $75 payment of each dog was often not paid by the consumer.

The alleged poor condition and performance of the shelter was acknowledged by the officials of the shelter in the report, that those interviewed “appear to understand that their shelter operation is inadequate.” They said that they were a small town with little funding and a small tax base, and that they were doing the best they could.

Most of the dogs were in unhealthy conditions when they were picked up, shelter officials explained in the report, and they did not want to give out unhealthy animals.