Posted on August 22, 2025
The Army Corps could not say when the MRGO agreement would be signed. The project would be fully funded by the federal government.
ST. BERNARD PARISH, La. — State officials and environmentalists labeled the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet as a “hurricane highway.”
The 75-mile-long shipping channel was built as a shortcut between the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico. It funneled storm surge into St. Bernard Parish and parts of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, contributing to levee failures and widespread flooding.
Now, 20 years after the storm, the Army Corps of Engineers was finally set to announce an agreement on a long-term restoration project for the MRGO.
Speaking in Violet at Wednesday’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority meeting, New Orleans District Commander Col. Scott Autin admitted they’re not there yet.
“We’re finalizing negotiations on the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet design agreement,” Autin said. “We’re working with CPRA. I was hoping we had it finalized fully. There are a couple of small widgets we still got to walk through.”
St. Bernard Parish President Louis Pomes is disappointed.
“We’re talking about two decades of designing, and we still don’t have 100 percent yet, and here we are two decades later, after Katrina, and we still don’t have the plan on the long term for the MRGO,” Pomes said.
Charles Allen from the National Audubon Society was also at the meeting. He says the closure of the rock dam on the waterway was an important first step.
“But here we are now, 20 years in the making,” Allen said. “The full-scale restoration that the Corps and so many other entities know needs to happen, needs to happen.”
In a map submitted to Congress in 2013, the Army Corps proposed measures such as new shoreline protection, marsh creation, and swamp restoration.
“As sediment comes in, as the strategic planting of wetland vegetation happens over time, you will see over time this natural accretion and growth of wetlands being regenerated,” Allen said.
Pomes hopes that the final plan for the MRGO will include building new land to help protect St. Bernard Parish and the city of New Orleans.
“We need to build land that’s going to stay, not just slow down a hurricane, not just slow down a surge and wash out after a hurricane comes,” Pomes said. “We need to build it to stay.”
The Army Corps could not say when the MRGO agreement would be signed. The project would be fully funded by the federal government.
