Levees make noticable difference

• By AMY WOLD
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Sep 20, 2008 - Page: 1A - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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Hurricane Ike helped illustrate what residents of two south Louisiana parishes already know — having levees and coastal restoration means less flooding during storms.

In the levee-protected area of Lafourche Parish from upper Golden Meadow northward, the levees held.

In neighboring Terrebonne Parish there are no hurricane protection levees and flooding from Hurricane Ike continues to be a problem a week after making landfall.

Estimates of the number of homes flooded in each parish are being tallied, but parish presidents in the two coastal parishes agree that the final numbers will show that more homes in Terrebonne Parish flooded than in Lafourche Parish during Hurricane Ike.

“The difference between having a levee and not having a levee,” said Windell Curole, director of the Terrebonne and Lafourche levee districts.

Even though Hurricane Gustav made landfall in Terrebonne Parish, the area didn’t receive much flooding because winds in that storm shifted so quickly that water came in and then was blown out before the overtopping of drainage levees could become widespread, Curole said.

However, Hurricane Ike was a much bigger storm and although it made landfall in Texas, the storm surge came into Terrebonne Parish and was made worse by two days of south winds generated by the hurricane, Curole said.

“The original surge, we were able to contain with our drainage levees,” said Terrebonne Parish President Michel Claudet. It was the south winds that helped push water over those levees for an extended period of time, he said.

“Gustav, we didn’t have very much (flooding) at all,” he said.

The exact number of flooded homes during Hurricane Ike isn’t available yet, but Claudet said mapping shows a potential 15,000 structures could be affected — 13,000 of them homes.

He said many homes are elevated and that saved many homes from flooding. Claudet guessed the number of flooded homes was probably less than 50 percent of those 13,000 homes in the flooded areas.

As of Friday, crews were still working to get water out of communities by breaching levees to let the water flow out. Crews also were using the parish’s 69 remaining pump stations — one was damaged during Hurricane Ike — and 40 additional pumps brought in for the job, Claudet said.

“If we’d had the Morganza to the Gulf (levee system) not one structure would have flooded, not one,” Claudet said.