Locals punch tickets to prep football playoffs
November 8, 2017
A SPARC OF HOPE
November 9, 2017
The last piece in the puzzle of levees, gates and locks that is the Terrebonne Parish Morganza alignment is now under construction, its workers headquartered at a former firehouse on Terrebonne Parish’s westernmost occupied bayou.
The Falgout Canal floodgate, parish officials say, will close the final gap in a project that voters taxed themselves to build, following continued failures by congressmen and senators to eke the money from the federal government. Once the floodgate is completed, Terrebonne Parish will have protection over a 35-mile stretch from Dularge to Pointe-aux-Chenes. The $40 million Falgout Canal component will span an estimated 195 feet. The price tag stands at about $40 million. “We’ve waited for this for a long time,” said Terrebonne District 7 Councilman Al Marmande, as he sits on a small bench outside the shrimp company that bears his name. “I understand people’s frustration, but building things takes a long time. Right now, we have all the permits, all the money, and actually the job had started probably three weeks ago.”
Parish President Gordon Dove said the parish government has kicked in $16.8 million to make it a reality, with additional funding from the Terrebonne Levee District and Conservation Board. Finally, despite the state’s difficult financial stature, Gov. John Bel Edwards approved additional money from the state.
“This is the linchpin from Pointe-aux-Chenes to Dularge,” Dove said. ”This is what we have waited for, for eleven years. This competes our system. I moved $16.8 million in Community Development Block Grant money to the council. I secured the state money through meeting wit the governor through our lobbyist and our delegation.
The capital outlay money from the state came to $13.8 million.
The floodgate will be named for the late attorney Jimmy Dagate, who left many marks on Terrebonne history including the work he did shepherding levee-related projects through his advice to the levee board.
Gazing at Bayou Dularge, whose waters reach southward to the Gulf of Mexico, Marmande spoke of what he loves in this place, what has kept him here through hurricanes and floods. A nearby angler began hauling in a catfish from the bayou’s gray-brown waters. The effort was to no avail. The fish snapped the line and made off with the bait. Squabbling crows snatched scraps of shrimp from his dockboards as not far away a big catfish forced itself from a nearby fisherman’s line, escaping with the bait.
All of this, the shrimp, the crows the fish and the angry angler, as well as the shrimp boats that still matter to this community’s economy and to Al’s Shrimp Company, are why has stayed and why he will stay. Better the monster you know. But in recent years the specter of flooding has taken on new significance. The ground gets lower, leaving more room for flooding when the water gets higher every year. The distance from bank to bank of the canal gets wider over, the same for bayou.
“I’ve really seen how the environment has changed,” he said in a flat Dularge patois. “I mean we really used to have nice cypress, beautiful marshland and in the last 40 or 50 years its eroded so bad. It’s unbelievable. Where you used to drive a car, you can drive a tugboat.”
Marmande blames the 2010 BP oil spill and the last big hurricanes for accelerating the erosion. He mourns the disappearance of coast that the lack of coast, leaving no buffer to slow the encroachment of salt water. While the saltwater moving deeper and faster into the area is good for shrimping, Marmande points out that it damages the plants, killing the roots which hold the soil in place, ultimately leading to drastically more erosion of the landscape. he reminisced about the vegetation which once graced this place where he grew up. As he spoke, squabbling crows snatched scraps of shrimp from his dock boards.
The saltwater moves in between the end of March, until the end of November, Maramande said. Although the massive land loss every school child knows is measured in football fields, still so many people didn’t leave, because we weren’t in danger.
According to Maramande, over the last ten years, the Terrebonne Levee and Conservation District, along with the state of Louisiana and Terrebonne Parish Consolidated Government, have built many floodgates to stop hurricane surges. He says the floodgates are also employed during times of extremely high tides, but describes such scenarios as “tricky” because ”fishermen want the waterways open as long as they can, so they can stay out and trawl.”
The Morganza to the Gulf floodway system is intended to close the entire parish into a locked system, keeping the fresh water in and the saltwater out. Maramande predicts it will take 20 years or less. With a solemn tone, he acknowledged that this would impact the estuaries making it difficult for businesses like his own, “The seafood industry is going to have to survive some way.”
Maramande spoke of the difficulty the project has had with the volume of permits needed to proceed, but remarked on how recently the Army Corps of Engineers has begun helping out.
Justin Lane, the project manager for Sea Level – the company constructing the floodgate- confirmed that the job received the Notice to Proceed on October 8th and would take 570 calendar days to complete, May 1 of 2019 according to his calendar, and was in the very early stages. The barge gate would have an opening clear distance of 165ft, and that the barge gate itself would be 191 feet in length.
“We are going to have another hurricane season without our floodgate,” said Maramande, “Maybe by some miracle they’ll have it finished by next hurricane season, but I don’t think that’s possible… it would be nice if it would be.”
