NLLD, landowners disagree on proposed project

A North Lafourche Levee District proposal to improve flood protection between Larose and Valentine on the La. Hwy. 1 side is receiving push back from landowners in the area.

The project, which is part of the Lockport to Larose Levee Project, currently asks for landowners between about a half mile below the Valentine Bridge to about three-fourths of a mile above the Bayou Lafourche Lift Bridge at Adam Boulevard to provide the rights of way to hundreds of feet of the backs of their respective properties. Granting right of way would allow the landowner to keep the title and any oil and gas interest in the property while allowing the levee district to reconstruct and maintain the levee on the property.

This new plan is in contrast to a previous plan for the project, approved by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which would have requested the rights of way to much less land, confusing and frustrating many landowners who want the flood protection but don’t want to give up a large parcel of land in exchange.

The North Lafourche Levee District said in a mailer to all affected landowners that its engineering team realized they could not build the levee as close to the existing borrow canal as was originally shown on the permit without negatively impacting the stability of the levee. The new plan proposes to build a larger levee over the existing levee and filling in the existing canal while digging a larger borrow canal further away from the levee.

Additionally, the mailer clarifies the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers approval, stating that it only grants permission to construct a levee and canal within the footprint, and it does not consider the design of the levee, its future stability or any other mechanical attributes.

“What we found was some of the strength of the soils wasn’t really as good as we had hoped, and the engineers who were showing us where we were planning to put this came back to us and said, ‘We don’t think we can build it there,’” explained North Lafourche Levee District Executive Director Dwayne Bourgeois. “That was the catalyst for us having to rethink this process…. We wanted to make sure that as we moved forward, if we were spending public dollars, we wanted to spend public dollars on something that would really work.”

The revised proposed project would greatly reduce the risk of flooding with plus 7.5 elevation levees, while the new, larger borrow canal would provide additional storage capacity for water, which would help existing pumps in the area better handle large rain events, according to the levee district. The project would be a primary source of protection for the area until the Morganza to the Gulf project is completed.

The only economically viable option for the project, the levee district said in a mailer, is to use local side borrow material. This proposal would take about five years at a total cost of $6 million, split close to evenly between the levee district and the parish. There would also be between an estimated $400,000 to $864,000 mitigation cost, according to the levee district.

“You build a house and you decide you want a driveway. Well, you have to give up the use of some of your property, use it differently to build a driveway,” Bourgeois explained. “If that property was subject to flooding, then you would have to give up the use of some of your property to build your own little levee around your property. Well, the only difference here is we’re offering to build the levee, because that’s what we’re here for, and we’re hoping people consider it.”

The levee district held two public meetings regarding the revised proposed project in October, and many residents expressed their displeasure with the new proposed plan.

Ray Cheramie, one of 130 landowners in the proposed project area, said he and an estimated 98 percent of the landowners will not sign away their rights of way.

“I will not sign on that today, tomorrow, next year or ever. I am totally against what they want. There are beaucoup [lots of] landowners that feel the same way that I do. We will not sign off on this,” he said.

The levee district would like the rights of way 380 feet in front of the existing canal and 210 feet behind the existing canal.

“Everybody’s up in arms and saying if that’s what you want then we’re just not going to build a levee. That’s not what we want. We want a levee, but we want the board members to come to some type of agreement where they’re not going to take as much land to the front in agriculture use,” Cheramie said.

Within the land Cheramie will be asked to surrender the right of way to sits a crawfish pond as well as some cattle. He is not alone in landowners who are putting the back of their respective properties to good use, and although Bourgeois said the levee district would try to make the landowners as whole as possible, Cheramie and many others wouldn’t be happy with the inconvenience.

“We’ve worked with each landowner in the past once they’ve donated us the rights to do this, and we say, ‘We’re going to fix that. We’re going to fix this. We’re going to push that back, or we’re going to move this for you,” the levee district executive director said.

Both Cheramie as well as the area’s parish councilman L. Phillip Gouaux would like to see increased flood protection in the area – an area the councilman said will be the most vulnerable to flooding in the parish once the floodwall near North American Shipyard is constructed – but Gouaux respects his constituents’ wishes to not surrender the rights of way to so much land.

“It’s going to end up not getting done, I guess, because we’re not bending over for the North Lafourche Levee District and their proposal,” Gouaux said. “Bottom line is they did some mitigation on the current alignment, and they got the Corps permits. They got the permit in hand to put the levee where the majority of the people want it, and they’ve chosen to change that plan.”

Bourgeois said that without receiving the rights of ways from landowners, the levee district could appropriate the land, however this would likely cost too much to be an option.

“The board hasn’t made a decision on what it would do, and they’re not going to make a decision unit they have to,” Bourgeois said when asked what the levee district would do if the landowners do not agree to providing the rights of way. “There are legal options, like appropriation, but you still would have to compensate for the value of the property and this makes this go through the roof. If we had to appropriate all of this property, we couldn’t afford to do this project.”

The North Lafourche Levee District – which encompasses everything north of the Intracoastal Canal covering more than 250 miles of levees and drainage canals and two-thirds of the population of the parish – receives five mills constitutionally and seven voter-approved mills, plus it has the right to ask residents for a one percent sales tax. The last time it asked for the sales tax in 2012, it failed by a very narrow margin.

The levee district contacted landowners throughout November requesting rights of ways.

So, until more funding sources are found, a new plan is presented or landowners change their minds, the project appears to remain at a standstill, according to the officials.

“Nobody’s happy about it. We’re not happy about it. I think there’s been a couple of people that have been vocal saying this is not the way you need to go, but we have to follow what the engineers tell us to do. Until someone would show us a drawing and that a professional engineer is willing to sign off on this, we can’t spend public monies on a hunch, a guess or a whim,” Bourgeois said.

NLLD