Terrebonne officials ask Congress for $28 million for Morganza-to-the-Gulf hurricane levees

The 2023 funds will be used for the Bayou Terrebonne Floodgate and Highway 55 road gate design; Reach K levee and control structures design; and Reach L levee and control structure design.

Dupre, whose request involves a 3.6-mile section of the system known as Reach F, said he also believed the additional money was not included in the president’s budget because several projects, including those funded through the infrastructure act, are not yet “shovel ready.”

“The reason our request is for Reach F is that reach, along with the Houma Navigation Canal Lock Complex, was listed as a ‘constructable feature’ in the original 2014 congressional authorization,” he said in an email response to questions.

Terrebonne and Lafourche parishes and the state have struggled for years to get funding included in the federal budget for the 98-mile levee system, which was first authorized by Congress in 2000. It was reauthorized in 2014 because, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and other major storms, the Corps concluded that the heights of the levees and other structures needed to be significantly elevated.

The system is being designed to protect from surges caused by storms that have a 1% chance of occurring in any year, the so-called 100-year storm. 

In its 2013 revised environmental study of the levee system, the Corps estimated it would cost $10.3 billion, but the state has estimated its cost at only $3.5 billion to $4.3 billion in its proposed 2023 coastal Master Plan update.

The difference includes varying estimates on what the Corps believed would be the cost of clay needed to build large parts of the system and other cost-savings efforts the local levee districts and the state have used.

Construction of the levee system actually began in 2006, using $18 million in state and local funds, the first of about $1 billion that has been spent on the system by the local levee districts and the state.

“Our community has been taxing ourselves for over twenty years to build Morganza,” said Dupre in the letter requesting funding, referring to sales taxes dedicated to the system’s construction by the two parishes. The state has been using funds from state budget surpluses and offshore oil revenue.