More restoration funds allocated

• By AMY WOLD
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Aug 14, 2008 - Page: 1A - UPDATED: 12:45 a.m.

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NEW ORLEANS — Gov. Bobby Jindal called Wednesday a “billion-dollar day” for Louisiana after the state’s coastal and levee authority approved an additional $300 million in projects.

“It’s a great day for our state and a great day for coastal restoration,” Gov. Bobby Jindal said after a meeting of the state’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority in New Orleans.

This most recent group of projects  — which includes the $300 million set aside by the Legislature for restoration and levee work — bumps the state’s coastal restoration and levee work past the $1 billion mark over the next several years.

The balance of the $1.1 billion comes from programs such as the Coastal Impact Assistance Program, the state-federal Coastal Wetlands Planning, Protection and Restoration Act, the state trust fund and surplus state funds from 2007.

“This will be the most money the state has spent in one year on restoration,” Jindal said.

To put the amount in perspective, the governor said that before Hurricane Katrina, the state spent between $10 million and $15 million a year on coastal restoration.

The most recent list of projects approved by the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority includes not only money to help with the state’s share for New Orleans-area levees, but also puts another $40 million toward the levee system being built in Terrebonne Parish and $15 million to improve the levee system in Lafourche.

Coastal restoration projects include funding for freshwater diversion projects in Bayou Lafourche and Myrtle Grove, as well as shoreline protection projects in south Louisiana.

The money was freed up after last week’s executive order by President Bush allowing Louisiana more time to pay its share of New Orleans area levee improvements, said Garret Graves, chairman of the authority and the governor’s executive assistant for coastal activities.

Until that agreement, the state was expected to pay its share — about $1.8 billion — by 2011, the time the projects are expected to be completed.

However, the executive order allows the state to repay that amount over the next 30 years instead, Graves said.

“We were in fact given a mortgage, a low-interest mortgage,” Graves said. “It frees up the state.”

The most recent list of projects still includes $100 million that will allow the state to move forward with land acquisition needed for the levee improvements in the greater New Orleans area, Graves said.