Funding puts levee feasibility study on track

• By AMY WOLD
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Oct 12, 2009 - Page: 1B

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With an influx of federal stimulus money, a project to provide hurricane and flood protection to communities between Lafourche and Plaquemines parishes is back under way, state officials say.

There was a several years slowdown in the work on a feasibility study for the project because of a lack of funding, but the stimulus bill changed that, said Dustin White, project manager with the state Office of Coastal Protection and Restoration.

Currently, the feasibility study will look at four levee alignment and flood protection alternatives with the southernmost alternative being a levee that follows the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway east to west between the levees in Lafourche and Plaquemines parishes. The Donaldsonville to the Gulf project received feasibility study authorization through Congress in 1998.

Two other levee alternatives are farther north along U.S. 90 and the fourth is an alignment that follows the ridges of the eastern levee in Lafourche and the western levee along the Mississippi River.

Randy Trosclair, executive director of the Lafourche Basin Levee District, said the levee board has already gone on record as saying that they want the GIWW alignment approved both because it protects the most area and has a good cost-benefit ratio.

A 50-50 cost share agreement between the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the state and the levee district was originally signed in 2002 for an estimated cost of $6.4 million to complete a feasibility study for the Donaldsonville to the Gulf project, White said.

However, soon after that agreement Congress didn’t appropriate much funding for the corps’ portion of the work, White said. Although the state has been moving forward on some work, it wasn’t until this year that the corps was successful in getting funding for the work through the stimulus money, he said.

In July, the corps updated a new cost share agreement with the state and the levee district to finish the feasibility study with an estimated cost of $10.2 million, White said. With the stimulus money — about $1.5 million to the corps — there is enough funding to finish the feasibility study, White said.

The draft feasibility report is expected to be complete by October 2010, a final feasibility report by March 2011 and a Chief’s Report from the Army’s Office of the Chief of Engineers by the end of 2011.

It is this report that is sent to Congress for authorization, likely in the next Water Resources Development Act process after that date, said Jerome Zeringue, deputy executive director of the state Office of Coastal Protection and Restoration.

After that, Congress needs to appropriate funding for engineering, design and construction of the project, Zeringue said, adding that “it’s going to be awhile,” before work begins.

In the meantime, the state’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority is putting together a panel to look at the proposed alignments as well, Zeringue said.

One of the concerns the panel examines could be similar to another related levee project in Terrebonne Parish, Morganza to the Gulf.