Agencies: No funds for lakes projects

• By STEVEN WARD
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Nov 5, 2009 - Page: 1A

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A $21 million plan to restore six lakes near LSU and City Park has been developed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and is ready to go forward, the corps project manager said.

But the price tag is so high, the local partners — officials with LSU, city-parish government and the East Baton Rouge Parish Recreation and Park Commission — said they don’t have the money to execute the plan.

“We just don’t have the money. Funding is a big problem. Unless we figure out a creative way to come up with the money, the project will stay in limbo,” said Jason Soileau, assistant director of facility development at LSU.

Four of the lakes, University Lake, Lake Crest, Campus Lake and College Lake, are owned by LSU. City Park Lake is owned by BREC.

It’s unclear who owns the sixth lake, Lake Erie.

Corps officials are trying to determine ownership.

Nick Sims, the corps’ project manager, said the plan has been in a holding pattern for awhile.

The feasibility study for the restoration goes back to 2005.

“We’ve had the plan ready for a year. We are just waiting on direction from the local partners on what to do next,” Sims said.

Two years ago, public meetings were held. Three proposed plans to drain and dredge the lakes to prevent them from reverting back to swamp were developed.

Corps officials have said the lakes were created in the 1930s when the original cypress swamps there were logged and then the areas were dammed off.

In 2007, the federal/local cost for the project, $7 million, was a 65/35 percent split. The federal government would pay $4.6 million and the local partners would contribute $2.4 million to the lakes project.

That $7 million estimate has ballooned into $21 million in the past two years.