February potential start date for levee work

A U.S. Army Corps of Engineers representative said last week that the corps could start building the $30 million in non-federal, hurricane protection levees near Dulac by February.

U.S. Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) inserted the $30 million into 2006’s Emergency Supplemental Appro-priations Bill to build the levees after he was urged to do so by coastal protection officials in the state. The corps took no action on the project, sending some of the money to Southern University.

Vitter, accompanied by several Tri-parish area state and local officials, met in Washington, D.C., with Corps Commander Robert Van Antwerp in September to ask about the corps’ lack of action on the project. The meeting, along with bitter public complaints by Vitter, spurred the corps to start the work, Vitter said in Houma last week.

Mark Wingate, senior corps project manager, told the Terrebonne Parish Council’s Public Services Committee that Van Antwerp made a commitment to Vitter at last month’s meeting.

The Suzie Canal and Orange Street levees will stretch seven-and-a-half miles, Wingate said. The Orange Street levee will be nine-and-a-half feet high.

Though the levees’ construction is funded by the federal government, Terrebonne Parish will maintain them, said South Lafourche and Terrebonne levee districts Director Windell Curole.

The corps has already begun collecting soil borings and other data to develop blueprints, Wingate said.

“We have crews on the ground now,” he told the committee. The corps has spent $1.3 million of the $30 million allocation so far on the soil borings and engineering.

Terrebonne Parish needs to give the corps right of entry to the land containing the new levees by Jan. 5, Wingate said.

After receiving the soil borings, the corps will make development plans between November and January.

During that time, the corps will be working to assure that the project complies with environmental regulations. Wingate said he is proceeding under the assumption the project will receive a Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI) on the environment.

A negative environmental impact finding would delay the project.

Wingate told the committee that meeting the target groundbreaking date of February 2009 “won’t be easy.”

Four pipelines run under the area where the levees will be constructed, he said. Since the corps will not build over pipelines, the pipes will have to be elevated over the levee, costing the parish more than a million dollars.

The corps, after discussing the pipelines with Terrebonne Parish and state Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority officials, will probably leave a gap in the levees where the pipelines run underground, Wingate said.

“We’ve obtained support to move in this direction,” he said.

The parish would have to fill in the gaps after the pipes are raised.

“This is not a federal levee, but we have not compromised our standards,” Wingate said. “It will be designed according to current standards.”

Also at the meeting, Darrin Lee with the state Department of Natural Resources told the committee that some of the barrier islands in Terrebonne Bay endured damage from Hurricanes Gustav.

Though Whiskey Island was relatively undamaged, Gustav opened a large breach on the western part of Raccoon Island and caused significant erosion on the eastern part.

Timbalier Island also suffered erosion on its eastern part, but “East Timbalier Island is in the worst shape,” Lee said.

By 1984, East Timbalier had been surrounded by rocks to protect its shore. Most of the rocks were gone by 2007, illustrating problems involved with using rocks to protect islands, Lee said.

Much of the islands’ shorelines regained after hurricanes Katrina and Rita were lost again to Gustav.

Jerome Zeringue, an assistant in the Governor’s Office of Coastal Activities, said the creation of the state’s Barrier Island Maintenance Program could help with receiving reimbursement from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to restore the shorelines.

“It costs a lot to put sand on beaches,” Zeringue said.

Before the establishment of the maintenance program, FEMA would not reimburse the state any money, he said.

Lee told the committee, ” FEMA only pays to put back what you had, not new projects.”