[StBernard] St. Bernard Parish to remove 3,400 concrete slabs

[Westley Annis]

St. Bernard Parish to remove 3,400 concrete slabs
by Chris Kirkham, The Times-Picayune 
Saturday June 20, 2009, 8:24 PM

The earth shook on Imperial Drive on Friday as giant bulldozers ripped
through mounds of concrete in the middle of an otherwise quiet Chalmette
subdivision. 

On this street and others across St. Bernard Parish over the next year,
crews will engage in the noisy yet symbolic process of hauling away 3,403
slabs from properties sold to the state's Road Home program. 


Scattered throughout the parish, the lingering concrete reminders of
Hurricane Katrina's destruction have left entire blocks looking like ghost
towns. Remaining slabs have held up the parish's long-awaited lot next door
program, which would allow homeowners to buy adjoining lots and expand
existing houses. 

"I'm really thrilled to see it," said Patricia Nation, one of the few
returning homeowners amid a sea of slabs in the Buccaneer Villa North
subdivision. "Because at least now it'll look like a neighborhood, and not a
war-torn zone." 

Slab removal in St. Bernard started June 9 and is expected to be complete
within a year, according to the Louisiana Land Trust, the nonprofit holding
company for Road Home properties across the state. 

The vast majority of slabs held by the Trust are in St. Bernard: 3,403 out
of a total 4,492 across the state. In total, the St. Bernard slab removal
project is estimated to cost $10 million, said Land Trust Executive Director
Michael Taylor. Slab removal for the rest of the state is estimated to cost
$3 million. 

CDM Inc., a Massachusetts engineering contractor that manages many of the
parish's federal recovery projects, is overseeing slab removal and home
demolition across the state for the Land Trust. The work of breaking up and
hauling off concrete on the project will be bid out to contractors in more
than 15 separate phases over the next year. The initial phase, now being
performed by Durr Heavy Construction, will involve a test batch of about 300
slabs over 90 days. 

"Slab removal" is a delicate way to describe a messy, labor-intensive
process. Beginning in February, crews had to get state Department of
Environmental Quality inspections on each slab to ensure there were no
asbestos problems. In addition, power, gas and sewer lines had to be cut on
the vacant property. 

Bulldozers start by grabbing a corner of the slab and ripping it apart chunk
by chunk. Huge boulders and twisted steel cables are carted off in dump
trucks to be recycled. Only the sidewalk and the section of the driveway
between the sidewalk and street are left intact. 

Within five days of completing the cleanup, workers return to backfill the
lot with new soil and a sprinkling of Bermuda Grass seeds. 

On blocks where the slabs are gone, the difference is notable. 

Don Clark, the St. Bernard demolition manager for CDM and a native of Arabi,
pointed out the difference while walking down the 3600 block of Volpe Drive
in Chalmette. 

"You can still see the problems; this is what happened during Katrina," he
said, pointing to a lot with a raised slab. Walking farther down the block,
Clark surveyed three cleared lots with newly filled dirt. "This is where we
want to go," he said. 

Once slabs are cleared, Parish President Craig Taffaro said the parish can
begin selling the properties under its lot-next-door program. The parish has
waited because once the lots are purchased by homeowners, the slabs are no
longer eligible to be removed with federal dollars. 

Although more than 3,400 slabs will be carted off under the program in St.
Bernard, hundreds of others could remain for years. The Land Trust's slab
removal program only covers homes that were sold to the Road Home Corp. and
later demolished. 

The parish's FEMA-financed demolition contractor, Unified Recovery Group,
has demolished hundreds of homes in the past year that did not comply with
parish housing ordinances. Those lots are still in the hands of private
owners, and the parish's demolition contract did not include slab removal.