Posted on August 18, 2020
The state Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority is planning emergency repairs on a damaged beach levee that has left Grand Isle exposed to storms during the height of hurricane season.
The CPRA and the Army Corps of Engineers, which built the levee, have been at odds over which agency should lead and pay for the repairs, and how quickly the work must be done. The CPRA and Grand Isle’s leaders say work must be done immediately to fix nearly 2,000 feet of levee that were ripped apart in early June by Tropical Storm Cristobal. Corps officials have said legal agreements and permitting timelines require a slower approach that would likely push the project’s start into early next year, well after the hurricane season.
On Wednesday, the CPRA announced it would go it alone, undertaking an emergency bidding process that could result in the work being done by the end of the year. The project is estimated to cost between $6 million and $8 million. The project will be paid for with royalties received from offshore oil drilling via the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act, or GOMESA.
Officials inspect the damage to the ‘burrito’ levee on the far west side of Grand Isle, La., Thursday, June 11, 2020. The storm surge from Tropical Storm Cristobal damaged nearly 2,000 feet of the levee.
STAFF PHOTO BY SOPHIA GERMER
“We’re trying to devise a plan to get out there and finish the work sooner rather than later,” CPRA Executive Director Bren Haase said during a meeting of the Governor’s Advisory Commission on Coastal Protection, Restoration and Conservation on Wednesday. “Hopefully, we can get this done before the end of hurricane season.”
The typical bidding process requires advertising the project in three newspapers or other journals for 25 days. The emergency process eliminates those requirements and could get the project out to bid by next week, CPRA officials said.
Waves kicked up by Cristobal gouged through about 85 feet of sand to reach the levee’s core, a wrapped tube of clay known as the “burrito.” The damage has put the island in a “crisis situation,” said Grand Isle Mayor David Camardelle, who has warned another storm could burst the exposed burrito and destroy homes and businesses behind it.
The Corps has been working on a $15 million storm protection project that would bulk up the same section of levee and shoreline damaged by Cristobal. Last month, the Corps completed the first phase – a string of stone breakwaters offshore from the levee. The second phase, set to begin in January, would have spread 400,000 cubic yards of sand behind the breakwater and over the beach and the damaged levee.
A path from a street is washed away in Grand Isle, La., Thursday, June 11, 2020. The storm surge from Tropical Storm Cristobal damaged about 1,600 feet of the “burrito” levees that line the Gulf of Mexico side of the island.
STAFF PHOTO BY SOPHIA GERMER
The CPRA now plans to do much of the second phase itself.
While CPRA officials hope to finish by the end of the year, the Corps didn’t foresee completing the project until June 2022.
The Corps must issue permits for the work, but that process appears to be going smoothly, Haase said.
“We’re using their template and their data,” he said. “It’s the same project; just done a little more quickly.”
Source: nola
