State gives area $105M for coastal projects

Damage to Terrebonne delivered by hurricanes Gustav and Ike has prodded parish, state and federal officials into making commitments to build levees in the southern part of the parish.

Two events occurred last week that saw officials trying to take action to respond to the storms.

A delegation of parish, state and federal officials traveled to Washington, D.C. on Wednesday to meet with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers chief of engineers Robert Van Antwerp.

They discussed why the corps has not started work on building $30 million of non-federal levees in Terrebonne paid for in the Emergency Supplemental Bill passed by Congress in 2006.

The delegation included Windell Curole, director of the Terrebonne and South Lafourche levee districts; Terrebonne Parish President Michel Claudet; Lafourche Parish President Charlotte Randolph; state Sen. Reggie Dupre (D-Houma); U.S. Sen. David Vitter (R-LA), and U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA).

The eight miles of non-federal levees in Dulac would not be part of the Morganza-to-the-Gulf hurricane protection levee project, Curole said. The corps would be entirely responsible for building the levees, he said. Terrebonne Parish would maintain them.

The corps has asserted that the reason the agency has not begun building the levees is that preparation work and soil testing had not been performed on the site where the levees were to be constructed.

At last Wednesday’s meeting, Vitter, Curole and Dupre said the corps made a commitment to expedite the use of the $30 million to build the non-federal levees. According to Curole, the corps said the work could be completed by the end of next year.

“Seems we got a commitment from the corps headquarters to move forward,” Dupre said.

The corps paid Southern University $955,000 to analyze the site where the levees would be built, an action criticized by Vitter. Southern subcontracted 65 percent of the work to the environmental division of the Baton Rouge-based engineering firm Shaw Group.

Shaw would provide projected costs and environmental compliance, among other things, according to a corps news release.

“The corps hires people to do soil sampling,” said Terrebonne levee board president Tony Alford. “The corps never asked us or the parish to help them get soil samples. They’re in charge. No one ever notified us.”

Alford said Congress’ $30 million allocation for levees in Terrebonne came about when former Vitter legislative assistant Garret Graves attended groundbreaking for the first stretch of Morganza to be completed by the parish following Hurricane Rita.

Graves asked whether he could do anything concerning flood protection, Alford said. The levee district gave him a list of projects.

“They got the $30 million passed,” Alford said. “But anything you get from the federal government has to go through the corps. The corps has not got one bit of dirt on the ground. They hired Shaw to do what – we don’t know. We could have put the $30 million on the ground and stopped the flooding (from Hurricane Ike) that happened.”

“The corps process has become so bureaucratic, we can’t expedite, we can’t get it moving,” he said. “So send us the money, but not the corps with the money.”

Curole said, “The corps was looking to get borrow (material) for the site. The parish was in no way responsible for the delay.”

At a meeting of the Terrebonne levee board last week, the levee district authorized between $125 to $170 million to spend on building dozens of miles of hurricane protection levees as part of the Morganza-to-the-Gulf project from Dularge to Pointe-aux-Chenes.

“It’s the southern piece of Morganza,” said Steve Smith with T. Baker Smith, a major Terrebonne levee district contractor. “Never before have we dedicated this kind of money. It’s a great example of locals raising money, putting up our own chips first.”

Alford said the Morganza levees will be 10 feet high with a base width of 100 feet.

The corps stated several months ago that the agency wanted the base width to be 1,000 feet. However, constructing the levees with bases of 1,000 feet would permit the levee district to build only 10 to 15 miles of levees, Alford said.

“We’re still working with the corps to meet their criteria,” he said. “The criteria are so far out there, we’ve had problems.”

“If you’re just worried about corps criteria, we’d just get 15 miles,” he said.

Alford said the levee board at Monday’s meeting set a deadline of six months for design work to begin on the Morganza levees.

The construction will be paid for through the parishwide sales tax assessed to pay for Morganza and three or four state sources, including last year’s budget surplus and this year’s surplus, Smith said.

In Baton Rouge on Friday, the Joint Legislative Committee on the Budget approved $40 million in state surplus funds for the Morganza project.

The construction work would partly satisfy the Morganza local match requirement. The federal government will pay 65 percent of Morganza’s cost.

The state and Terrebonne Parish will pay 35 percent of that figure, although state Sen. Reggie Dupre (D-Houma) asked a U.S. Senate subcommittee last week that the federal government pay all of Morganza’s cost.

If Morganza were to cost an even $1 billion, the state and Terrebonne would pay a total of $350 million, Smith said.

Last Monday’s action by the Terrebonne levee board gives the levee district the authority to negotiate with three or four engineers to do design work on the Morganza levees, Smith said. The levee district would then find another firm to carry out the construction of the levees.

“This is the first step in the process,” Smith said. “Nobody would begin to turn dirt tomorrow.”

He said the Morganza levees could take up to two years to begin construction. In four years, Terrebonne would have 25 miles of hurricane protection levees.

“That’s substantial,” Smith said.

Alford said levee district representatives met with members of the Terrebonne Parish Council and the state and federal delegations who gave their approval to begin work on the Morganza levees.

“We were ready to start before the hurricanes,” he said. “They said ‘move on.'”

Curole said, “Once the engineering is done, we’ll have a better idea of what will happen.”

The levee district still has to deal with environmental and pipeline relocation issues, he said.

And the levee district needs some permits from the corps.

Alford said, “We still have to work with them.”