Could Houma’s Navigation Canal be another MRGO?

The Terrebonne Parish Council addressed a smorgasbord of issues at its regular meeting Wednesday night, and at the regular council committee meetings on Aug. 20.

The council is showing continuing concern that the Houma Navigation Canal will act as a conduit into Terrebonne Parish for a storm surge should a major hurricane strike the parish.

Councilman Clayton Voisin compared the Houma Navigation Canal, which runs from Houma to the Gulf of Mexico below Cocodrie, to the now infamous, 76-mile-long Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, or MRGO.

That ship channel cuts through three quarters the length of St. Bernard Parish, beginning north of Chalmette and emptying eastward into the Gulf. The outlet breached severely because of Hurricane Katrina’s storm surge, inundating the eastern part of St. Bernard

Parish.

“The Houma Navigation Canal is the biggest threat to this parish,” Voisin said during the council’s Public Services Committee meeting, referring to “the water coming up the MRGO.”

“Except for St. Bernard, we’re the most threatened,” he said.

To protect itself from a storm surge, Terrebonne Parish is relying on the hurricane protection levee system which will be constructed by the federal government as part of the massive Morganza to the Gulf flood and erosion control project.

Also as part of the Morganza project, the federal government is building a lock and floodgate on the Houma Navigation Canal near Dulac, but both the levees and the lock are more than a decade away from completion.

Houma resident Gerald Schouest recommended to the committee that the canal be narrowed near where Bayou Grand Caillou intersects with the canal.

Councilman Harold Lapeyre expressed support for the choke, approving of “anything we can do to speed up the process.”

“If we can get this system in place, I’m for it,” he said. “Give people some level of protection. We have none right now.”

Terrebonne Parish has no hurricane protection levees.

At a recent council meeting, Terrebonne Parish Sheriff Jerry Larpenter, as a stopgap measure, pushed the idea of sinking a ship across the width of the canal to block a storm surge.

Jerome Zeringue, executive director of the Terrebonne Levee and Conservation District, supported the notion.

“If it’s simply sinking a boat in the Houma Navigation Canal, we can do that,” Zeringue said.

He added that the ship may not be available after this year.

Lapeyre said “clarity” about the canal’s threat to Terrebonne “is getting there.”

Voisin announced that Larpenter gave the parish “a wake-up call.”

“He made the recommendation,” Voisin said. “We need to work on a plan to block the Houma Navigation Canal. We need to be choking this channel in three or four places.”

He warned that water could still spread around any obstacle in the canal, but said the suggestions were good.

Dulac resident Reggie Bourg told the committee, “It’s not rocket science. If water comes north from Cocodrie, we’d want anything to block it.”

Also during Monday night’s meeting, Bourg resident Will Theriot, speaking for the Regional Military Museum on Barrow Street in Houma, asked the Policy, Procedure, and Legal Committee to consider creating a Veterans Memorial District within Terrebonne Parish, which would be able to collect taxes – with voter approval – to build veterans museums and monuments.

Lafourche Parish created a Veterans Memorial District in Ward 10, which covers Fourchon, Cut Off, Golden Meadow, Galliano, and part of Larose.

“We beg of you to do the same,” Theriot said.

Councilman Peter Rhodes said that the district could assess a half mill property tax.

Council Clerk Paul Labat said that representatives of the district would have to act as a public body, holding public meetings and following bid laws.

Earlier, Pat Gordon, Terrebonne Parish planning and zoning director, told the committee that a new ordinance is required to change the section of the parish code of ordinances covering driveway construction.

The current ordinance – Chapter 22, Article II, Section 22-29 – is in conflict with a zoning ordinance passed in the 1970s, Gordon said.

He said the entire section needs to be revoked, except for the portion mandating the types of materials required for building driveways.

At the council’s regular meeting on Aug. 8, a dispute arose over whether the parish’s planning and zoning department or the council has the authority to permit the construction of a double driveway on Clay Street in Houma.

In another zoning issue, Houma- Terrebonne Regional Planning Commission member Alex Ostheimer warned the parish council that new commercial developments in Bayou Cane and along the Louisiana Highway 311 corridor could suffocate residential sections in those areas.

The commission wants changes to zoning ordinances to make commercial buildings in parts of Bayou Cane and along Hwy. 311 near Savanne Road adhere more strictly to guidelines on visual appeal.

“I defend rights of property owners, but open land is being developed” in those areas, Ostheimer said.

“They will have neighbors on all four sides,” he said. “The average person can’t defend himself against adverse neighborhood development. It’s imperative to prevent conflict as remaining land is developed.”

Finally, the council failed to renew the term of School Board representative Marcel Fournier to the Terrebonne Economic Development Authority board of directors.

The council elected Graham Douglas to fill Founier’s spot.

Clarence Williams was selected as the new NAACP representative on the TEDA board.