18-wheeler leaves levee flattened

The Lafourche Parish Public Works Department discovered a logging contractor hauling logs with an 18-wheeler on top of a levee near the Choupic community last week.

When a parish field officer asked the JKM Logging contractor to stop last Tuesday because of the damage he was doing to the levee, the contractor refused and continued working.

That decision, however, could come with an expensive price tag. The Lafourche Parish Council voted unanimously last week to hire attorney Michael Gee to file a cease and desist injunction on the contractor to legally force him to stop.

Gee filed the injunction last Wednesday.

“This is a grave situation, because he really damaged a levee section, and we need him to stop,” said Parish President Charlotte Randolph at the meeting. “We need it to be done legally, and that’s why we’re hiring an attorney to make certain that all the proper paperwork is filed.”

Public Works Director Kerry Babin estimates the contractor had been hauling logs with an 18-wheeler on top of the levee for a few days prior to being discovered.

“Prior to this truck arriving there, the only thing that fit on this levee was a 4-wheeler, so he has flattened it considerably,” said Randolph.

Babin said considerable damage has been done to about a one-forth-mile span of the approximately two-and-one-half-mile levee protecting the Choupic community.

He added the parish could fix the damage, but it would take great work and expense.

“But the problem is, having the levee settle, cure and grow grass on it before hurricane season is questionable, because just a mound of dirt may not hold water for a storm surge,” said Babin.

With the height the levee currently sits after being damaged, Councilman Michael Delatte said heavy rainfall could flood the community.

“God forbid we have a rain in a few weeks like we had Dec. 9 [2009] because we’re going to lose the community,” said Delatte. “That’s how much damage was done by lowering this levee, because the water was at the maximum of the height of levee [on Dec. 9].”

The councilman said this is the same levee the parish recently addressed after it was found in violation of U.S. Corps of Engineers standards in 2000 – a $26,800 a day fine for which the parish is looking to receive amnesty.

“We were impeding freshwater from getting into the wetlands by having this levee… What we did to remove ourselves from that fine issue was place gates in the levy to make a leaky levee out of it,” said Randolph. “And thus with it becoming a leaky levee, then we allowed the ebb and flow of water.”

Delatte said the contractor’s 18-wheeler has now made the levee twice as wide as it was before.

“He actually dismantled and bulldozed over some of the corps recommended openings in this levee,” said Delatte. “Right now, if the corps was to come through here, we’d have so many violations, we don’t have enough money to spend on all the fines.”

However, Babin said the parish could easily prove to the corps that the damage is not the parish’s doing.

“If we can show that another party without our knowledge impacted the levee, then the corps would pursue them,” he said.

Councilman Rodney Doucet said he would present a resolution at next week’s meeting for the parish to attempt to recoup all repair fees, court fees and fine fees from JKM Logging.

A logging contractor destroyed a portion of a Choupic levee last week leaving a trail of damaged trees in its wake. Lafourche Parish filed a cease and desist injunction to force the JKM logger to stop. * Photo by ROBERT FISCHER