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June 29, 2011
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July 1, 2011
The North Lafourche Conservation, Levee and Drainage District continues to fortify its flood protection, including a massive, in-house reconfiguration of the levee and drainage system along the 40 Arpent Canal and Bayou L’Bleau from Lockport to Larose.
NLCLDD Executive Director Dwayne Bourgeois called it a “put-it-to-bed kind of project.” The Larose-to-Lockport undertaking is in response to a cyclical issue in which the levee would lose its elevation because the slope was too narrow.
“It wouldn’t happen fast, but in most places [the levee] would just start to lose its elevation and the material was slowly being pushed out into the reservoir,” he said. “You’d dig it and put it back on and then it would sink again.”
Material from the berm, or slope, on either side of the original levee had to be used in the levee’s previous elevation projects, which left the barrier with weak support.
This project would stabilize the parish’s protection from the threat of backwater flooding from the south. When it’s complete, the levee elevation would be 9.5 feet and would eventually settle around 7.5 feet, Bourgeois said.
To widen the slope, the project is incorporating more than 75 feet of wet-side berm on the marshland and Bayou L’Bleau side and 120 feet of berm between the borrow canal and the centerline of the levee on the dry side.
Another project is in the works that would consolidate the Barrios and Edna pump stations, which is part of the levee district’s push to coordinate the project area’s five pump stations to drain into one reservoir.
Lafourche Parish Government plans to finance the pump station consolidation with a portion of its Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery funds.
The second segment of the levee reconfiguration is expected to be complete later this year, Bourgeois said. This would offer a stable line of protection, with just a few gaps that would be filled in once the drainage situation is handled, from Lockport to Valentine.
The levee district, which is working with LPG through a Cooperative Endeavor Agreement, is utilizing a $1.8 million, 150-ton Liebherr hydraulic dragline it purchased in 2008 for the reconfiguration.
Excluding the price of the excavator, Bourgeois said he couldn’t pinpoint the cost of the project to the levee district other than “it is a very small fraction” of what it would cost to release the project to a private contractor.
The NLCLDD executive director said the levee district is paying for engineering for design, surveying, acquisition of rights of way, permitting, insurance and maintenance.
LPG is contributing track excavators, dozers and other equipment to the project, and the parish is paying for the operators and fuel. LPG spokesman Brennan Matherne said the total cost to the parish was not immediately available, because it is considered a maintenance project.
ConocoPhillips donated 192 acres of land, 44 acres of which are under long-term lease by Lee Orgeron, president of Montco Offshore, Inc. Bourgeois said the joint agreement is indicative of how receptive landowners have been to sacrificing rights of way for the levee project.
“ConocoPhillips is fantastic to work with, and Lee Orgeron, fantastic to work with,” Bourgeois said. “Their support for this project, along with all of the other local landowners, has simply been incredible.”
The land under lease by Orgeron will be used to plant cypress trees to offset any negative environmental impacts that would have stymied the procurement of permits.
“It’s not going as fast as we’d all like, but this is the only way we could afford to do it,” Bourgeois said. “If you would try to put this contract out, you’d be talking $700 [per linear] foot. We don’t have that kind of money, so we’re doing what we can at the rate we can as a maintenance project.”
The levee district is also laying the groundwork for a substantial project that would begin in Lockport and improve flood protection farther north to Thibodaux.
NLCLDD says the project will protect 35,000 residents from a southerly backwater flood threat by using the ridges of bayous Lafourche and Blue, new levees and the restoration of those already built, and the maintenance and coordination of water control structures.
The levee district has contracted out three of the project’s nine elements: segments 1, 3 and 5.
Element 1 was awarded to Cecil D. Gassiott LLC out of Alexandria for $1.1 million. This portion of the project entails bringing in new material to build a levee on Company Canal east of Lake Fields and should be complete by the first quarter of next year, Bourgeois said.
Elements 3 and 5 were bid out together and awarded to Dean Equipment, Inc. out of Harvey for $2.14 million. Both segments are going to be reconfiguring and elevating existing levees north of Lake Fields, and they would eventually be connected by element 4 at Bayou Folse.
The segmented project, referred to as the Thibodaux-Lockport-Bayou Blue Flood Protection Project, is also designed to protect against a southerly backwater flood threat.
The North Lafourche Conservation, Levee and Drainage District’s marsh buggy works on a Valentine bank. COURTESY PHOTO
