By LEONARD GRAY – Managing Editor

BOUTTE – A small device sitting atop Hahnville High School will make a big difference in how we live in the future.

Contractors will know about exact elevations to build houses. Water lines will be built to avoid subsidence problems. Evacuation routes can be elevated correctly in case of approaching hurricanes. Even economic development will take an upturn, as industries will be attracted to a safer place to build their plants.

“We will only have about 600 to 700 in the U.S.,” said Dr. Roy Dokka of LSU’s Louisiana Spatial Reference Center and Center for Geoinformatics, on hand Wednesday for the “opening” of a new Global Positioning System station at the high school.

Linked by radio to a dozen orbiting satellites, the station will provide real-time information on “ultimate benchmark” elevations to reflect current conditions on soil subsidence.

Tied in with weather information systems, the station would one day soon be able to provide much more current conditions, based on the quality of radio signals through Earth’s atmosphere.

For now though, according to Tim Osborn, the Gulf Operations regional manager for the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, the $35,000 cost will balance with decades of income through economic development, time saved and lives and property preserved.

Data from the station will also be available soon to the public online at www.ngs.noaa.gov. From there, contractors will access the exact information for elevations, previously handled by land surveyors dealing with benchmark pegs which can shift over time.

This will be the first of two for St. Charles Parish, the other planned to be installed soon at Destrehan High School.

On hand at the unveiling as well on Wednesday were St. Charles Parish President Albert Laque and Superintendent of Schools Dr. Rodney Lafon, each of whom received a plaque of appreciation. Laque and Lafon, Osborn said, eagerly embraced the opportunity to install the system.

“You’ll be able to do it here, better, faster and cheaper,” Dokka said.

One of the first projects for the system will be an analysis of the elevations along U.S. Highway 90, one of the major hurricane evacuation routes. This will help determine how much the highway should be elevated to keep evacuees out of harm’s way, should a major storm event occur.