[StBernard] Plans to block surge in eastern N.O., St. Bernard OK'd

[Westley Annis]

Plans to block surge in eastern N.O., St. Bernard OK'd
by Mark Schleifstein, The Times-Picayune 
Thursday June 05, 2008, 10:12 PM
The Army Corps of Engineers has approved plans for protecting the Industrial
Canal from storm surge with a huge concrete wall and two navigation gates. 

. Click here to view the Army Corps of Engineers plan to build a concrete
barrier wall
<http://blog.nola.com/news_impact/2008/06/VEECLOSE060608.pdf>

The wall and gates will stretch across the triangular wetlands sandwiched
between levees on the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway along eastern New Orleans
and the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet in St. Bernard Parish. 

The corps, which recommended the plans based on a contractor's proposal,
will release a draft document June 27. The public will have 30 days to
comment before it is approved. 

The corps on Thursday also announced its official recommendation to Congress
for closing the MR-GO shipping channel at Bayou la Loutre with a rock
barrier. Though long expected, the recommendation paves the way for
barricading both ends of the controversial channel -- a troublesome shortcut
for storm surge from the Gulf of Mexico -- by the beginning of the 2009
hurricane season. 

The plan for a wall and gates was proposed by Shaw Environmental &
Infrastructure Inc. this year as part of its successful $695 million bid to
design and build the protection project. The alignment Shaw chose was one of
five being considered in the corps's expedited environmental review process.


Shaw's proposal would include a small lock on Bayou Bienvenue on the eastern
edge of the wetland triangle for fishing boats traveling into Lake Borgne,
and a larger lock for commercial ships and barges on the Gulf Intracoastal
Waterway, said Maj. Jeremy Chapman, corps project manager. 

A segment of the MR-GO along the project footprint would be filled with clay
or other materials into which part of the wall would be built. Most of the
wall -- which would rise about 20 feet above sea level -- would be completed
by June 1, 2009, as part of a requirement that Shaw provide expedited surge
protection. A deck and the upper part of the wall that could be as high as
31 feet above sea level in some locations would be completed by the
beginning of hurricane season in 2011. 

Two alternatives to build deepwater locks in the Gulf waterway just east of
the Michoud slip were rejected as too costly and disruptive to shipping
access to the Michoud canal. They also would have required upgrading
floodwalls along that canal to 100-year levels, an expensive proposition. 

A shorter wall plan, closer to the junction of the MR-GO and Gulf waterway,
was rejected in part because it would have required relocating a major
pipeline, which would have delayed completion of interim protection and
would cost more. 

A longer wall plan, to the east of the one chosen, also would have cost
more. 

Corps officials again were criticized by Lower 9th Ward residents at a
meeting Wednesday for not already having built the surge barrier at the vee
and not building a similar surge gate at the entrance of the Industrial
Canal to Lake Pontchartrain. 

Corps New Orleans District communications director Maj. Timothy Kurgan said
the agency is working as quickly as possible to provide additional
protection, but the closure design had to wait for completion of new
scientific studies on the threat of storm surge. 

The forwarding of the MR-GO closing document to Congress marks the
deauthorization of the 50-year-old shortcut for shipping from the Gulf of
Mexico to downtown New Orleans. Congress doesn't have to approve the plan;
it can object, but that's an unlikely scenario in this case. 

It also paves the way for construction of a 950-foot-long dike of rock
across the canal that would be 7 feet above sea level, 12 feet wide at its
top and 450 feet wide at the bottom. Construction could begin 150 days after
the corps receives notification that Congress has received the report. 

However, the corps will coordinate construction of the dike with a separate
project repairing and renovating the lock between the Mississippi River and
the Industrial Canal. While those renovations are under way, barges using
the canal will be detoured down the river to Baptiste Collette and then to
the southern end of the MR-GO, where they will travel north to re-enter the
Gulf Intracoastal Waterway traveling east. 

Information about these levee construction projects, part of the corps's
larger plan to protect the region from so-called 100-year storms, can be
found on the Web at http://www.nolaenvironmental.gov. Information about the
MR-GO closing can be found at http://mrgo.usace.army.mil. 

Mark Schleifstein can be reached at mschleifstein at timespicayune.com or (504)
826-3327.