By Monique Roth
L’Observateur

LULING – History was made Wednesday in St. Charles Parish as ground was broken for the first phase of the St. Charles Parish West Bank Hurricane Protection Levee.

A groundbreaking ceremony was held on Jan. 22 at 1 p.m. at the end of Lafayette Drive in Luling. The event featured guest speakers from both parish and state government.

The weather was not the only thing that was sunny as elected officials, parish residents, levee teams and funding agency representatives were all in high spirits at the historic event.

Once complete, the Willowridge Levee will offer five-and-a-half feet of hurricane and tidal flooding protection from the Peterson Canal to an existing berm behind Willowridge Drive.

The flood control project is part of the $500 million St. Charles Parish West Bank Levee Initiative and is the first phase of four total phases.

Garret Graves, Gov. Bobby Jindal’s executive assistant for coastal activities, announced that $8 million in additional funds were included in the 2014 budget for the project.

Graves said levees were not the only area the state was interested in funding but that coastal restoration was also a top priority at this time. Sand pumping the islands of Baraataria Bay would serve as a “speed bump” to some of a storm’s impact, Graves said.

St. Charles Parish Coun cilwoman Julia Fisher-Perrier addressed the crowd and said that “this project is the first step to protect the parish from flood waters and astronomical flood insurance premiums.”

Parish President V.J. St. Pierre Jr. said that levee construction is no simple task and joked “today has only been in the works for 25 years.”

St. Pierre said that unfortunately the entire project wouldn’t be completed overnight, but that everyone involved was working hard to make the entire project  “shovel-ready” as soon as possible. He said the Willowridge Levee should take a year to complete.

The St. Charles Parish West Bank Hurricane Protection Levee is a multi-phase project that encompasses 33 miles from the Davis Diversion West Guide Levee in Luling to a ridge at Louisiana Highway 308 in Lafourche Parish.

The West Bank of St. Charles Parish is currently unprotected from storm surges associated with hurricanes and tropical storms. The unprotected area has been declared a federal disaster area 14 times in the last 30 years because of named storms events.

This long-term project is split into four reaches within St. Charles Parish – Willowridge in Luling, Ellington in Luling and Boutte, Magnolia Ridge in Boutte and Sunset in Paradis, Bayou Gauche and Des Allemands. It will offer flood protection to approximately 25,300 residents and numerous business and industrial sites, including energy and petrochemical producers. It will also protect U.S. Highway 90, a critical evacuation route for southeast Louisiana residents from multiple parishes, and portions of St. James, St. John the Baptist, Ascension, Assumption and Lafourche parishes.