Restore Act could help fund local coastal work

The St. Mary Levee District may be able to get matching funds through the Restore Act, as a result of fines from the 2010 BP oil spill, in order to fund some parish flood protection or restoration projects, St. Mary Levee District Executive Director Tim Matte said Thursday.
Restore Act funding will come from fines paid by BP or Transocean, Matte said. Fine money is allocated in different “pots of the money,” Matte said. “There’s an allocation of 10 percent … that the state anticipates using for matching funds.”
For example, the levee district could use some of its own funds for a project it wanted to build, and get additional matching funds from the “pot of money that would be available to do projects throughout coastal Louisiana,” Matte said.
The levee district needs to keep those potential matching funds “on our radar screen” to fund some of the many projects the district wants to see accomplished, Matte said.
“That might be an opportunity for us to leverage some of our funds if we can put up a couple million and get a couple million from the state to do a project. Maybe that’s how we can put together some of these pieces that we need to put together,” Matte said. “It’s not going to be significant until the BP fines are settled.”
At Thursday’s St. Mary Levee District commission meeting, the board approved amending a contract with CB&I for the Bayou Chene Flood Control Project in the amount of $37,110. The change to the contract will involve additional modeling requested by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to address some concerns, Matte said.
Officials are two years into the permitting phase on the Bayou Chene project, and estimate the project will cost $80 million. The Bayou Chene Flood Control Project has a regional impact protecting Morgan City, St. Mary, lower St. Martin, Assumption and Terrebonne parishes along with portions of Lafourche Parish and drainage for Iberville Parish.
The project includes a permanent structure that will block Bayou Chene so that flood waters cannot travel from Bayou Chene through Bayou Boeuf to Lake Palourde.
Regarding the proposed closure of Bayou Teche at its intersection with the Charenton Canal, Matte said the levee district did a recognizance level study to determine whether a structure across Bayou Teche would be effective at preventing floods and, most importantly, to document whether any unanticipated effects could occur in other areas of the parish, Matte said.
The district requested state capital outlay money to fund the project, but nothing specific has been identified yet, Matte said. The project is estimated to cost $10 million, Matte said.
Levee district officials believe the project may have a good chance of receiving statewide flood control funds because of the documented cases of flooding in the area, Matte said. “We’re at a point now where, if there’s an interest in the board in moving forward, there are some other tasks that can be done to move us forward down the line,” Matte said. The permitting process for the Bayou Teche project could go ahead and begin if the board so chooses, Matte said.
Engineers need to provide a 5 percent design for the project to be able to begin the permitting phase, Engineer Jeff Peña, of CB&I, said.
“This is the last piece of the puzzle to close in from the (Bayou) Teche to Calumet,” Levee District Commissioner J.P. Hebert said.
Also at the meeting, the commission approved a change order with Southern Constructors in the amount of $12,014 for the levee district’s project to raise the Wax Lake East levees. The change to the contract is to use borrow material to fill some spots on the levees holding water near Cotten Road in Patterson, Matte said.
The Wax Lake East levees provide flood protection for Berwick and Patterson, and the project consists of raising sections of a 2,700-foot levee stretch by one-half foot to 1½ feet.
For the Lake End Park to Justa Street portion of the Morgan City Levee Improvements Project, the corps originally requested the district to provide a Phase I Cultural Resources survey for a proposed borrow pit along La. 70, Engineer Kevin O’Gorman of T. Baker Smith said.
At January’s levee board meeting, the commission approved amending the project contract for historical or archaeological work. In the 1980s, a preliminary cultural, historical and archaeological survey determined some type were located at the site.
Since that January request, corps officials got state officials to exempt that survey in the district’s permit for the borrow pit because of the study done in the 1980s to investigate that area, O’Gorman said. The Morgan City Levee Improvements Project is aimed at providing backwater flood protection by preventing Lake Palourde waters from overtopping the levees.