Frustration in Terrebonne

• By AMY WOLD
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Mar 16, 2008 - Page: 1A - UPDATED: 1:45 p.m.

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HOUMA -- After 15 years of planning and several attempts at getting congressional approval, Terrebonne Parish got authorization late last year for the Morganza to the Gulf hurricane protection system.

But the celebration was short-lived.

Just weeks later, the Terrebonne Levee and Conservation District learned that cost estimates for the project had increased far beyond what had been authorized, meaning more study was needed.

For a parish without any hurricane protection, the news was the definition of “frustration.”

“I don’t know if I could describe it for you,” said Daniel Walker, president of the Morganza Action Coalition and an attorney in Houma. “It was extremely frustrating.”

The decision to re-examine the project stems from a provision in the 1986 Water Resources Development Act. It says that if the cost of an authorized project goes up by 20 percent, it needs to be re-evaluated and resubmitted to Congress for approval.

After hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, the cost of building hurricane protection systems shot up, Walker said.

In addition, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers knew that calculations for storm surge heights mean that levees in the project will have to be built higher than expected.

To provide 100-year protection, what used to be an 18-foot levee might now need to be 20 or 30 feet high, Walker said.

“They’re insulating themselves against being accused of making mistakes so they’re overengineering these things,” he said.
The new study of the project will take some time.

“According to (the corps) it is going to take two years and several million dollars to do it,” said Jerome Zeringue, executive director of the Terrebonne Levee and Conservation District.

The process will start with a “programmatic economic assessment”  to provide a basic look at the updated costs and benefits, he said.

Although the project was authorized at $886 million, the current estimate could be as high as $1.5 billion, Zeringue said. However, the economic value of the area protected by the project also has grown, he said.