Levee segments being shored up, raised in South Lafourche

Work is under way, courtesy of the one-cent sales tax, to boost a number of upgrades to the South Lafourche levee system, officials said.

Work is currently being done on the “E North” section of levee in the Clovelly area on the east side of Bayou Lafourche to return the section of levee to a design grade height of eight feet. With the additional sales tax monies assured, levee district manager Windell Curole said contractors will be directed to raise the section to a height of 10 feet above sea level.

Work is also ongoing in the “A West” and “B South” sections of the ring levee system, Curole said. That section runs from the floodgates below Golden Meadow north to within the town limits on the west side of the bayou, he noted.

Subsidence of the entire earthen platform of South Louisiana has caused the entire area n including the levee system n to gradually sink over the last decade.

Both sections were designed to a height of 13 feet, but Curole said recent elevations studies have detected a subsidence as low as 10 feet in some areas.

“We’re moving dirt right now,” he said, acknowledging that the contactor is slightly behind schedule. However, the work is expected to be complete by the beginning of next year’s hurricane season, he noted.

The sections in the Bully Camp area running from Galliano north to Cut Off on the west side of Bayou Lafourche n “B North” and “C South” n are also slated to be improved.

Those areas are slated to be raised to a design grade height of 12 feet, Curole said. Again, subsidence has caused some areas in this section to dip to as low as nine feet above sea level.

The southernmost section of the levee system, known as the “A East” segment, will also be raised in the coming weeks, the levee manager said. This segment runs from the Yankee Canal area on the east side of Bayou Lafourche south to the Leon Theriot Floodgates below Golden Meadow.

The work is scheduled to begin early 2007, Curole said, and includes raising the levee back to its original design height of 13 feet above sea level. In some areas, the levee has dipped as low as 10 feet because of subsidence, he said.

The original cost to raise the section back to its design level ranged $1.5 million, Curole said. Because of the high demand for equipment and contractors throughout the region in the wake of last year’s storms, the price is more likely to run nearly $5 million, he said.

“We will likely have to spend a year’s worth of the new one-cent sales tax revenue to bring this section back to design height but we have no choice,” the levee manager said. “It’s the southernmost section of the system that will probably take the initial brunt of a storm so it has to be in the best shape possible.”