BOUTTE — As the son of an engineer, Garret Graves grew up crawling around construction sites and playing on equipment.

So the Republican Congressman said he got a thrill seeing the actual work being done last week on the levee system in St. Charles Parish.

As he spoke to an assemblage of reporters and St. Charles Parish officials, trucks and bulldozers were moving dirt on the site of the Ellington Levee under construction in Boutte.

“This is so impressive,” Graves said. “It gets so frustrating to see people spend as much time as they do on reports and things like that. To see this project turning dirt as quickly as it has and real protection in place in the short amount of time we’ve seen here is really impressive. We’re already seeing the difference it is making in keeping water where it belongs, which is out of people’s houses and in the swamp.”

The brief press conference capped a morning in which Graves joined St. Charles Parish President Larry Cochran and other officials for a tour of the St. Charles Parish West Bank Hurricane Protection Levee system.

The Willowridge Reach portion of the project, a 9,500-feet long, 7.5-feet high earthen levee, is complete.

Phase II of the Willowridge Reach is a pump station that is expected to be online in the coming months. When completed, it will pump 300 cubic feet per second.

A 15.7-acre retention pond has been created with the clay from the pond used to build the levees.

Another phase of the project is a T-wall that will tie the David Diversion into the rest of the levee system.

The Ellington Reach is under construction and will connect with the Willowridge Reach.

Cochran gave Graves much credit for helping get the project off the ground.

“Without you, without your tenacity, we wouldn’t be where we are,” Cochran said.

Graves said any aerial tour quickly shows the importance of hurricane protection to the parish.

“It only takes just a couple of minutes up above us in a helicopter to see, not just all the real estate that’s here that needs to be protected and would be inundated if it weren’t for some of these protection levees and pump stations, but also all the industry here that doesn’t just provide jobs in St. Charles Parish and economic activity in Louisiana, but literally provides resources for this entire nation,” Graves said. “After Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, when this area got flooded, the impact nationwide of the 75 cents a gallon in average gasoline price spikes caused hundreds of millions of additional dollars that consumers were paying for gasoline every single day. So as we continue to make progress on these levees, this is the important thing to keep in mind. This is the right thing to do.”

Graves said the St. Charles Parish project should show neighboring St. John the Baptist Parish how to be proactive in getting its proposed West Shore Levee system built.

The Army Corps of Engineers approved the St. John project in December, and voters approved a property tax in April dedicated to its construction and maintenance. Although the current federal budget does not include the project.

Graves said the project still is very much alive.

“St. John Parish has made it clear that this is a priority, that they are putting skin in the game,” Graves said.

“That sends a strong message to Washington, a strong message to the Corps of Engineers. Just two jobs back, I was building these projects for the state of Louisiana and there wasn’t a time that we waited for the Corps of Engineers.

“If you want to get a project built, you need to move forward. That’s how we got projects done. We need a multi-pronged strategy, looking at various federal and state funding sources.”