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St. Mary Parish Consolidated Gravity Drainage District 2 held a groundbreaking ceremony Tuesday for the Lake End Park to Justa Street section of the Morgan City Levee Improvements Project. The ceremony was held at the Cajun Coast welcome center. Contractor, Phylway Construction of Thibodaux, has 400 days, excluding rain days, to complete the $8.1 million portion of the levee project. (The Daily Review/Zachary Fitzgerald)

Drainage district breaks ground on $8.1 million levee project

By ZACHARY FITZGERALD zfitzgerald@daily-review.com

After several years of planning, design and engineering work, construction is officially underway on a major portion of the Morgan City Levee Improvements Project, the result of which will lower residents’ flood insurance rates, officials say.
St. Mary Parish Consolidated Gravity Drainage District 2 held a groundbreaking Tuesday on the Lake End Park to Justa Street section of the Morgan City levee project. The ceremony took place at the Cajun Coast welcome center.
Local leaders have been working since 2013 to get permits, do engineering and secure funding, Drainage District Chairman Lee Dragna said. Physical work moving dirt for the project was set to begin Wednesday clearing trees by La. 70.
Contractor, Phylway Construction of Thibodaux, has 400 days to complete the project, not counting rain days. Levees will be raised by 1 foot to as much as 5 feet in some places. Engineering firm T. Baker Smith designed the project.
Officials’ goal for the Morgan City levee project is to meet the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s 100-year storm surge standards for flood insurance purposes, Dragna said.
Once all the levees are raised, “we will be able to lower the insurance rates” in Morgan City, Dragna said.
“We’re plenty protected where we sit,” Dragna said. “But this is a flood insurance fight, not really a flood fight.”
This section is the second phase of the project to go to construction and costs $8.1 million, covering a 5-mile stretch. It includes Justa Street to Pump Station 6 on Victor II Boulevard, the undeveloped Hellenic property and La. 70 at Lake End Park and cuts across the highway to tie into the mainline levee off of the Intracoastal Waterway, Dragna said.
Construction of the entire Morgan City levee project, excluding Lakeside Subdivision, is estimated to cost almost $18 million. The whole project covers nine miles.
Levee work is designed to provide protection from potential backwater flooding from the Atchafalaya River, Bayou Chene and Lake Palourde.
There are some low spots in the levee system, but for the most part, the work is taking place to meet FEMA flood map standards, which determine insurance rates, Dragna said.
Completion of the project will allow Morgan City to adopt its new flood maps, which the city has been appealing since 2008.
Drainage district funds and Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority grant money are paying for the project.
The funding breakdown will be roughly 2/3 local money and 1/3 state money, State Rep. Sam Jones, D-Franklin, said.
The Legislature’s joint transportation committee authorized the drainage district to do a “design build” and saved about $1 million on the project as a result, Jones said.
Though the project was just outside Jones’ district, the project “made perfectly good sense,” and drainage district officials had everything “ready to go,” he said.
“If it’s helpful for the parish, it doesn’t matter where it’s located,” Jones said.
The first phase of the project began in May to raise levees in Siracusaville. Parish officials are using Community Development Block Grant money to fund the Siracusaville section, Parish Chief Administrative Officer Henry “Bo” LaGrange said.
Work is continuing in Siracusaville as the parish council recently extended the contract beyond its original mid-February finish date because of rain days.
Cajun Coast officials plan to temporarily close the welcome center, beginning Feb. 22 for five to six weeks due to levee work that will be going on in front of the center. The center may reopen for three months after that before closing for another five to six weeks when levee work will start again, Cajun Coast Executive Director Carrie Stansbury said.
But officials haven’t made a final decision yet whether the center will stay closed during the three-month period in between construction, she said.
The project’s third phase will entail raising a short stretch of La. 70 by Lake End Park and tying the highway into the levee system, Dragna said. The La. 70 levee work will also protect Brownell Homes from potential flooding due to Lake Palourde, he said.
In the fourth phase, workers will build a new pump station by Lake Palourde, replacing the pump station by the hospital on La. 70.
St. Mary Levee District officials have agreed to come up with a solution to provide flood protection for Lakeside Subdivision, Levee District Executive Director Tim Matte said. Levee district leaders are exploring possible options to give protection to Lakeside, and Matte wants to see modeling results before making a decision.
Dragna expects all work on the Morgan City Levee Improvements Project to finish by the end of 2018, all of the work in Lakeside and possibly some of the work to build the new pump station.

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