Plaquemines Parish works on storm protection system

• By AMY WOLD
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Jan 29, 2009 - Page: 10A - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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If Plaquemines Parish is going to get better hurricane protection, then it’s going to need more than levees, Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser said.

As a result, the parish since last year has been working on a plan to beef up the marsh and ridge protection in front of those levees, but it’s going to take money, officials say.

On Friday, the parish government announced a plan to use Mississippi River sediments to build a barrier that would range in elevation of sea level to 8 feet tall to help protect levees from storm surge.

The first part of this work would occur outside a section of levee that stretches for about eight miles from Venice to just north of Boothville on the west of the river.

The parish would like to have it “substantially complete” by the time the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers expects to have work completed on the levee system in 2012, said Joe Suhayda, an oceanographer working with the parish on its protection plan.

“The Venice area is the one where there’s a lot of business and activity,” Suhayda said. In addition, officials started with this section because it’s the closest place where the project can take advantage of navigation dredging material removed from the river, he said.

Separated into three phases of work, the parish plan includes near-term work that could be done in one to three years, such as creating large elevated forested ridges outside the levee system, said P.J. Hahn, director of coastal restoration for Plaquemines Parish.

A second phase would include midrange projects, like creating elevated forested marsh that would be completed in three to five years. The third phase would include the long term projects of rebuilding and elevating barrier islands and be completed within 10 and 20 years, Hahn said.

The parish also has asked the corps’ Engineer Research and Development Center to rerun computer modeling that looked at the flood control benefit the parish would receive from what’s in the state’s master plan for the area and see what kind of storm surge reduction could be achieved, he said.

In the meantime, the parish is trying to secure land rights, funding and permit applications, Hahn said.

Parish officials have met with the state coastal officials to discuss additional protection ideas and the concept has some merit, said Jerome Zeringue, director of planning and programs with the Governor’s Office of Coastal Activities.

The idea of building marsh and ridges in front of the levees provides both habitat restoration and protection for the levees, Zeringue said. It fits with the state’s master plan goal of “multiple lines of defense” which calls for building habitat and “speed bumps” for storm surge ranging from barrier island restoration to elevating homes, he said.

However, it will come down to how the parish will be able to fund this type of work on the scale they want to do it, Zeringue said.