Corps to Build Permanent Pumps, Dams in Louisiana

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The Army Corps of Engineers will begin taking proposals next month for permanent replacements for pumps and floodgates at the three canals where waters poured into New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, officials said March 16.

An agreement that accommodates proposals pushed by Orleans and Jefferson parish officials broke a year-plus deadlock, said Col. Robert Sinkler, commander of the Hurricane Protection Office.

The Corps has about $804 million already approved to replace the current structures, built to last five to seven years. Its plans now call for a contract to be awarded in June 2011, and for the new structures to be complete by about September 2014.

Garret Graves, chairman of the state’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, said governments and agencies had to decide whether to spend millions on patching a temporary fix or “to take every penny we can and invest it in the long-term permanent solution. And the permanent solution is what we chose.”

The corps said the proposals to deepen canals and make other major drainage improvements, and to pump some stormwater into the Mississippi River rather than Lake Pontchartrain, would push the cost up to about $3.4 billion. Those are internal projects and the corps isn’t authorized to approve money for them, Sinkler said.

“Operating costs will be a local responsibility, but construction should be a federal task. It’s needed for storm protection. It’s not needed for local drainage,” Marcia St. Martin, director of the New Orleans Sewerage and Water Board, said afterward.

Local agencies have joined to commission an independent estimate, Graves, Jefferson Parish Councilmen John Young and Tom Capella, and water board member Tommie Vassal said during the news conference.

They also said they will keep pushing for the drainage improvements.

“We have about two years” to get the corps to include those, Graves said.

He said he will also keep pushing for more wetlands protection and restoration in addition to the current $500 million “to get the Gulf a little bit further out. We’re not going to have the Gulf of Mexico lapping up against our coastal levees.”