Levee district pushes ahead with Morganza projects

The threat of hurricanes in south Louisiana hasn’t been completely eclipsed by the BP oil disaster, a reality Terrebonne Parish Levee District director Reggie Dupre emphasized at last Tuesday’s South Central Industrial Association meeting in Houma.

Dupre was on hand to update work and explain modifications to the Morganza-to-the-Gulf hurricane protection system.

“In 2008, hurricanes were a landmark issue for us here in Terrebonne,” Dupre said. “We needed to begin to protect ourselves, so we began a very, very aggressive campaign effort to start to build levees and floodgates.”

The Morganza-to-the-Gulf project was born out of this need.

The project’s purpose is to protect development and the remaining fragile marsh from hurricane storm surge, according to Terrebonne Levee District’s website, and constitutes 72 miles of levees, which wrap around Terrebonne Parish and, later, connect with Lafourche Parish’s ring-levee system.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is the federal sponsor for this project, but is in the process of restudying the area and conducting a post-authorization change report, so the parish won’t likely see federal money for the Morganza project for quite some time, and will have to rely on its own money for the time being.

“We are spending about 12 percent of what the corps would build,” Dupre said, stating that the Corps of Engineers’ project is estimated to cost $450 million, while current levee district projects total a more modest $55 to $60 million.

“We just can’t afford a half billion dollars at this time, so this is what we figure we can afford to build,” Dupre said.

The entire project was originally broken up into 10 reaches spanning from Pointe-Aux-Chenes to Falgout Canal. To attract competitive bids, some of the reaches were broken into smaller sections with work scheduled at separate times.

Work is under way from the Bush Canal floodgate near Chauvin down to the Bayou Petit Caillou floodgate, since the areas to the east are at the highest risk for flooding, Dupre said.

Reach H-2, a 3.1-mile stretch between Bayou Petit Caillou and Placid Canal, was recently accepted at $9.8 million, the director said.

With state resources, Dupre explained the levee district currently has $112 million for the projects, with an added $5 million from tax collections.

“Our main priority for future projects is going to be the Houma Navigational Canal floodgate, reaches F and G-1, and the Bayou Grand Caillou floodgate … to protect the urban areas in Terrebonne Parish,” Dupre said, adding that $16 million is budgeted in the current fiscal year for those projects

He also said some funding will come from BP for oil spill response and, thanks to a new bill authored by state Rep. Gordon Dove, Terrebonne will save money by doing in-house mitigation. The levee district stands to save approximately $60,000 per acre, he said.

“We have many projects on the books,” Dupre said, and asserted the need to expedite these projects as quickly and as cost efficiently as possible.