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Work to raise Terrebonne Parish’s Ward 7 levee is nearing completion on the first two of three construction phases.
The $21.5 million levee runs 10.7 linear miles along the eastern shore of Lake Boudreaux and protects Bourg and Chauvin and protects citizens’ property from storm surge in the lake.
The project is funded with federal grants.
In years past the levee has been overtopped, but this project aims to mitigate risk associated with the land loss along the shores of Lake Boudreaux.
Though there are some entirely new sections of levee that have been constructed, the Ward 7 levee was originally eight feet tall and is being raised to 10 feet, said Terrebonne Parish Capital Projects Administrator Jeanne Bray.
The first phase of construction stretches a total of 3,700 feet of brand new levee starting at the Thompson Road levee heading south to Bayou Neuf and is substantially complete, Bray said.
The second phase stretches five miles from Upper little Caillou to Lower Little Caillou and is being raised to 10 feet, Bray said. The work should be complete by September.
Phase three is a two part project, Bray said. It is a five mile stretch of levee from Lower Little Caillou to Boudreaux Canal that must be widened in order to be raised to 10 feet.
The parish council recently approved adding $5.5 million to the Ward 7 levee’s budget to pay for the third phase. That is what brought the cost up to the $21.5 million total.
Unfortunately, Bray said, the work on this phase will destroy about 38 acres of marshland on the eastern shore of the lake. The cost to rebuild the marshland that will be destroyed is $2.5 million. That is the first part of phase three.
The second part is the actual widening and raising of the levee.
“If this would’ve been done 40 years ago there would’ve never been a house in Chauvin that would’ve ever flooded,” said Councilman Dirk Guidry, District 7. “You probably would’ve never had a house [flood] in the 1920s that would’ve ever flooded…It gives me chills to know how well we’re going to be protected.”
Flooding like this, a result of Hurricane Isaac in 2012, is what officials hope to avoid with new improvements like the Ward 7 levee in Chauvin. The water-dangered camps are not far away, in Cocodrie.
