Interim Surge Protction in Industrial Canal Delayed til 2010

[jinftl]

Industrial Canal job to be late, corps says
Interim barrier goal of '09 won't be met

Thursday, May 21, 2009
By Sheila Grissett
East Jefferson bureau

Interim storm surge protection in the Industrial Canal won't be finished as planned by the peak of hurricane season late this summer, an Army Corps of Engineers official confirmed Wednesday.

A $695 million corps contract awarded last year for construction of walls and gates to block "100-year" storm surges from entering the canal required that part of the huge structure be in place to provide some protection by mid-August.

But a series of issues combined to delay work on that interim protection, officially called "advanced measures," and it cannot be completed until the 2010 hurricane season, said corps senior project manager Ron Elmer.

Contributing to the delay, Elmer said, were real estate acquisitions, floodwall design criteria changes, the corps' tedious environmental evaluation process, and months spent addressing major complaints by the navigation industry.

"Cumulatively, all those setbacks added up," he said Wednesday.

"We're now projecting to have advance measures in place a year from now," he said. "And (they) will . . . be even better than what we had anticipated having in place this year" because of the additional time.

Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority-East President Tim Doody said earlier this week that residents of flood-ravaged communities near the canal, the site of catastrophic flooding during Hurricane Katrina, would be heartbroken if they get no surge protection this year.

"It would be a huge disappointment," he said.

After Katrina, it was the then-new levee authority and some business leaders who pushed the corps hard to figure out how to provide some surge protection this season.

Levee commissioners argued that residents of St. Bernard Parish, the Lower 9th Ward, Gentilly and other communities still struggling to rebuild from Katrina shouldn't have to wait for a surge barrier until June 1, 2011 -- the date corps officials have committed to delivering a completed 100-year system.

In response, the "advance measures" initiative was developed and the project contractor was asked to do everything possible to have those measures in place for August and September, the two most potentially active months of the storm season.

As more and more issues cropped up in recent months, levee commissioners voiced growing concern that interim protection was in jeopardy.

"Has the corps officially told me the advance measures won't be ready? No," Doody said Tuesday. "Do I believe they'll be ready? No, I don't."

Despite missing the 2009 goal, Elmer said work on the Industrial Canal closure structure is growing more refined and efficient by the day.

"We're making good progress driving the piles, and we hope to bring in a second rig on the 28th," he said. "Production is getting better and improving every day."
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