After 25 years, SLLD looks to continue staying flood free

After the tidal surges of Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, Gustav and Ike in the past five years, hurricane protection is a never-ending struggle for South Lafourche Levee District (SLLD) General Manager Windell Curole.

“Every day we want to have better flood protection than we had the day before,” said Curole. “That’s the approach we’ve taken since the board began in 1968.”

Since the landfall of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, the SLLD has made strides to reduce the chance of flooding.

“We raised some places up to 16 feet – used to be 10 – and we’ve done a number of jobs,” said Curole. “We’ve raised the levee from 10 to 12 to 13 feet, and we still have some areas to deal with. We have good elevation, but it’s just a matter of improving.”

Curole said even though Hurricane Rita made landfall on the Louisiana-Texas border, a slightly closer hit would have caused South Lafourche to flood – something that hasn’t happened since Hurricane Juan in 1985.

“I always want to warn people that there’s no guarantee,” said Curole. “No matter how good your system is, there’s always a hurricane that can be strong enough to put water over the top.”

The general manager said since 2005 the eastern levee has been built to stand at 16 feet near the Golden Meadow Floodgate, gradually tapering down to 10 feet in Larose.

“When you’re dealing with flood surge, it’s all about height,” said Curole. “As long as your levees are higher than the flood surge, you win. The higher the levee, the less chances of flooding.”

Curole said the SLLD plans to raise levees on the west side to a similar level, with this process still in its early stages.

He added higher levees are more paramount on the east side, because that’s where most hurricane tidal surge comes from.

Apart from levee protection, the SLLD recently completed its eight-year construction of the Leon Theriot Lock in Golden Meadow.

The lock is built 400 feet south of the existing floodgate and will allow more boat traffic to enter the levee system when hurricanes produce high tide in Bayou Lafourche.

“We have one gate closed, we open the gate, and although some water comes in, we limit how much water comes in. We get the boats in, and we close the gates behind us,” said Curole. “It would be impossible to open up [the floodgate] if we didn’t have the lock. It just gives us an opportunity we didn’t have before.”

Previously, once water reached a certain level, the floodgates were closed until Bayou Lafourche’s water outside of the system subsided – locking boats outside the system who didn’t make to the Golden Meadow Floodgate in time.

“Now there has to be three feet of water on La. 1 outside the system, before we’d have to close the gate,” said Curole. So everything would have to be underwater by a lot where it would get to the level that we couldn’t support them….With the lock now the water can get up to seven foot elevation before we tell people they couldn’t. Normally the bayou is somewhere around a one to two foot elevation.”