[StBernard] No funding set for pump station safehouses in St. Bernard, Plaquemines

[Westley Annis]

No funding set for pump station safehouses in St. Bernard, Plaquemines

11:13 PM CDT on Monday, March 23, 2009

 Mike Hoss / Eyewitness News

mhoss at wwltv.com 


NEW OLREANS - Pump station number one in Belle Chasse is the biggest and
oldest in Plaquemines Parish, but if you look directly across the
intracoastal waterway from it, you'll see something that Jefferson Parish
pump operators have that Plaquemines operators don't - a safehouse.

 "We have no safehouses," said Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser.
"We don't even have quiet rooms in none of the pump stations." 

St. Bernard Parish can relate. They have eight pumping stations, but when it
comes to a $2 to 4 million safehouse where they can truly protect pump
operators from hurricane force winds and tornadoes, they don't have one. 

"Obviously being in a pump house at 100 miles an hour, 10 miles an hour
winds, that's a dangerous situation," said St. Bernard Parish President
Craig Taffaro. 

Nungesser and Taffaro call it frustrating and heartbreaking. Three and a
half years post Katrina, their pump stations aren't storm proofed to handle
a strong hurricane. There are no safehouses for operators, and right now,
there are no immediate plans to build any. 

"It is frustrating," said East Bank Regional Levee Director Bob Turner. "You
know it is frustrating, especially when you consider the way the original
appropriation was set out." 

East Bank Regional Levee Director Bob Turner believes there's a reason
Jefferson Parish has 13 safehouses, five built by the corps of engineers,
and that New Orleans will soon have 22 of its 24 pump stations stormed
proofed to handle winds in excess of 130 miles an hour. Yet St. Bernard and
Plaquemines have neither and it comes down to one sentence. 

It dates back to 2006.  The 4th supplemental bill from Congress, when the
federal government laid out its plans to spend $250 million to storm proof
pump stations to ensure the operability of its stations during hurricanes,
storms and high water events. 

It says the projects will take place in the greater New Orleans and
surrounding areas. St. Bernard and Plaquemines thought they'd get some of
the money for safehouses and storm proofing being they were the surrounding
areas. But they say that's not how the sentence was interpreted. 

"The interpretation was that the safehouses money was to go to Jefferson and
Orleans," Taffaro said. "So Plaquemines and St. Bernard were sort of left
asking for a little bit more." 

The Corps says the reason it happened lies with the White House saying, "the
information provided by the administration to support the passage of the
$250 million in the 4th supplemental detailed $100 million for Jefferson
Parish and $150 million for Orleans Parish." 

"They're saying they had a pot of money and that pot of money has been
exhausted," said Tim Doody, president of the Southeast Louisiana Flood
Protection East Authority. 

FEMA will rebuild five of Plaquemines 18 pump stations. But Nungesser says
they won't be on line for another 18 months. 

What they do have now is this massive study. The corps has completed its
hurricane assessment of Plaquemines and St. Bernard, but right now there is
no money to begin the work and the two parishes that suffered a heavy toll
during Katrina would like equal treatment. 

"But I feel like we should get some funding to bring some of these stations
up to the same level that Orleans and Jefferson is getting," said Nungesser.


Taffaro said: "It would be an added bonus and what we consider to be
critical infrastructure to have safe houses so that we can operate real
time, activities during storms." 

Doody says the Regional Authority can't wait any longer and will try and
find the funding to build safehouses themselves. 

"You know they're up there exposed to the elements and operating the pumps
and we can't do that anymore we just can't," Doody said. 

But there's a glitch here too. The Regional Authority can't use money taxed
in one parish to build a safehouse in another parish. 

"Where it's going to come from, I'm not certain at this time, but I guess
I'm optimistic that I'll find it," Doody said. 

But until then St. Bernard and Plaquemines will sit and wait, with their
pump station operators no safer in many cases than they were the day before
Katrina.