[StBernard] Levee on MR-GO won't be raised

[Westley Annis]

Levee on MR-GO won't be raised
St. Bernard officials disappointed by plan 
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
By Karen Turni Bazile

The Army Corps of Engineers has no plans to elevate the Mississippi
River-Gulf Outlet levee on the Orleans Parish side of the Bayou Bienvenue
locks, and St. Bernard officials say that's bad news for parish residents
and those in the Lower 9th Ward. 

St. Bernard officials have generally praised the corps' quick-footed effort
to rebuild the devastated levees along the Gulf Outlet to a height of 20
feet in St. Bernard after Hurricane Katrina. But several said they were
caught off guard and disappointed by news they learned at Tuesday's Parish
Council meeting that there are no plans to elevate the levee between the
bayou and the concrete wall on the Industrial Canal, leaving a height gap of
as much as 9 feet. 

That stretch of earthen levee in Orleans Parish was authorized to stand at
14 feet but has subsided to a height of 11 and 12 feet in many places, said
Chris Gilmore, the corps' senior project manager for levees and floodwalls
in St. Bernard Parish. The levee on the St. Bernard side was authorized for
a height of 17.5 feet and was overbuilt to 20 feet to allow for subsidence. 

 
Gilmore, who regularly updates the council on corps projects, said the corps
doesn't want to spend money raising that stretch of the levee because it
won't be needed once floodgates authorized by Congress are built in the next
few years. The levees will lie inside the gates. 

After the flood-control system failed catastrophically during Hurricane
Katrina, the Bush administration gave the corps a twofold mandate for
restoring protection to the metro area: rebuild by June 1, 2006, the
destroyed or damaged sections of the system to the heights authorized by
Congress when it passed the Lake Pontchartrain and Vicinity Hurricane
Protection Plan in 1965; and have the rest of the system up to its
authorized height by Sept. 1, 2007. 

However, the situation with this section of levee is unique, Gilmore said,
because the plan doesn't call for it to be elevated to its authorized height
of 14 feet because of the proposed gates. 

The gates' locations are still being determined, but Gilmore said leaving
the levees at a lower height on the Orleans side of Bayou Bienvenue
increases the vulnerability to flooding for St. Bernard and the Lower 9th
Ward until the gates are built. He said the issue is being studied, and some
elevation work could be authorized on an interim basis since the gates won't
be completed until 2010. 

St. Bernard Parish Council Chairman Joey DiFatta said he and other parish
officials plan to voice their concerns at a special meeting today of the
East Louisiana Flood Protection Authority Levee Board, the newly
consolidated east bank levee board, in the St. Bernard Parish Council
chambers. "What burns me up is that they rebuilt our levees (in St. Bernard)
in six or seven months, but they have no construction plans for that
(Orleans) portion of the levee in the works. I will be here screaming and
hollering" at the meeting, DiFatta said. 

. . . . . . . 

Karen Turni Bazile can be reached at kturni at timespicayune.com or (504)
826-3321.