Firing range causes headaches for levee elevation project

When construction workers report to duty, there’s certainly some risk of danger that goes along with it.

No safety standards, however, account for possible danger facing the South Lafourche Levee District’s elevation of its western levee in one particular area.

Eymard’s Shooting Academy, a firing range, has sprouted up and entertained many south Lafourche shooting enthusiast along La. Highway 3235 in Cut Off.

The problem for the Levee District, however, is that shots are being fired in the direction of the levee – the very levee the district’s workers and its contractors’ workers must work as they move along the levee improving it.

“They weren’t shooting at them directly, but they were shooting toward their targets. Our contractor was working behind the targets,” South Lafourche Levee District Executive Director Windell Curole said. “People don’t always hit their targets. There are ricochets, and people sometimes sneeze when they’re shooting.”

Although no worker has been hit by a bullet or a ricochet, Curole said the contractor – tasked with placing dirt on the levee – contacted an expert in ranges, who deemed a large portion of the work area unsafe, so the contractor pulled his workers from the dangerous area.

“We needed a levee. If we wouldn’t have worked [there], that levee we would have had almost a mile area that would have been four feet lower than the rest of the levee system, so we had to figure out a way to get the contractor in to finish the job,” Curole explained.

The South Lafourche Levee District filed an injunction to stop the shooting, however the judge instructed the parties to settle – a difficult thing to do with three parties.

Therefore, the contractor and the firing range came to the agreement that the contractor would pay the firing range $5,000 a month in alternating months to shut down until the work was completed.

According to Curole, the firing range closed in September and about half of November for the contractor to finish its portion of the work.

Curole now fears that the contractor will ask the Levee District for reimbursement of paying the firing range to shut down as well as costs of schedule changes to the project due to the nature of the contract – one the executive director said allows for the best way to get a low bid but also leaves open the door for possible issues like this due to lack of regulations. Also, because the firing range was not in existence with the job was bid out, the levee district did not notate any possible issues of this nature in the contract.

“The contractor had the right to do anything he wanted back there, and with the firing range being there, the danger, he was not able to do it, so we expect we’ll probably be claiming those expenses toward the job and we’re going to be a little bit of a bind because we agree with them that it was dangerous,” Curole said.

That’s just part one of the problem for the levee district.

Part two comes when levee district employees make their way to the dangerous area during the process of shaping the dirt into a levee.

“That takes a lot of time, so the next step is we have to figure out how to get our work done without getting someone hurt. How do we work in the danger zone? And we definitely don’t want to be paying somebody money to not get shot at. So that’s the dilemma,” Curole said.

Multiple efforts by The Times to reach Eymard’s Shooting Academy to provide comment to this story were unsuccessful.

Because of reluctance to use taxpayer dollars to pay a business to close, Curole has asked Lafourche Parish officials to step in. Councilmen said at the last parish council meeting that they would look into it.

“We’re trying to talk to the parish. We think there are some laws and powers that the parish has to control safety, so we’re asking the parish to take another look at the situation. They’re a governmental entity with certain powers. Now, they can utilize those powers or not, like us,” Curole said.