ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST PARISH, La. — Hurricane season which begins on June 1, conjures up frightening images for people who live and work in the River Parishes.
Three years ago, Ida brought category 4 winds, heavy rains, and a massive storm surge from Lake Pontchartrain that caused widespread flooding in LaPlace.
Help is now on the way for 60,000 storm-weary residents of St. John, St. James, and St. Charles Parishes.
A new levee system is under construction to help reduce the risk of flooding in communities north of New Orleans.
It’s called the West Shore Lake Pontchartrain Project.
Jeff Williams is the senior project manager for the Army Corps of Engineers.
“We do clearing, we add sand and then we come back on top with embankment, including canals, drainage canals, all of those features working together to then create a final levee,” Williams said.
Williams took us on a tour of a levee construction site near Frenier’s Landing.
“The West Shore Lake Pontchartrain project consists of levees, floodwalls, drainage structures, and a pump station,” Williams said.
Thirteen-and-a-half miles of the eighteen-and-a-half-mile levee system is now under construction.
It will eventually extend from the Bonnet Carre Spillway to Garyville.
The system is designed to protect against flooding caused by a storm surge event that has a 1 percent chance of occurring in any year, a so-called 100-year storm.
While the work is well underway, West Shore communities are not expected to reap the benefits until the next hurricane season.
“A lot of it is just a sand base,” Williams said. “We don’t have very much embankment. We haven’t started any pump stations or anything like that.”
According to the Army Corps, the total cost of the project is pegged at about $760 million. The project is now expected to be completed by November 2027.
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