Governor John Bel Edwards has announced the start of construction on the Lake Borgne Marsh Creation Project in St. Bernard Parish.
According to the governor's office, the project is a part of the large-scale restoration strategy for the Pontchartrain Basin to reestablish the bay rim and intertidal marsh habitat in the area.
“I want to thank CPRA for their work in advancing this record-breaking effort to restore hundreds of acres of marshland in the Pontchartrain Basin,” Gov. Edwards said. “The Lake Borgne project and others like it play a vital role in reversing the trend of land loss across Louisiana, and this project represents significant progress in the fight to preserve our coast.”
Upon completion, the project will create and nourish approximately 2,770 acres of marsh on the southern shoreline of Lake Borgne near Shell Beach, they say.
The large-scale marsh creation was outlined in the Final Restoration Plan prepared by the Louisiana Trustee Implementation Group in January 2017 and is funded by dollars resulting from the aftermath of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill allocated by the Natural Resource Damage Assessment program. The project’s construction budget is $61 million.
“To complete the Lake Borgne project, we’re using 13 million cubic yards of dredged material to restore deteriorating marsh from the eastern shore of Bayou Yscloskey extending over four miles toward Lena Lagoon,” CPRA Executive Director Bren Haase said. “We’re excited to be making progress on another major restoration effort in St. Bernard Parish that will protect the hurricane risk reduction system around the Greater New Orleans region.”
Construction has begun on the containment dikes, which will allow the dredged material to fill all areas of open water and nourish the deteriorating marsh while minimizing the burden on existing marshland.
Duplantis Design Group (DDG) is conducting project engineering out of their Covington, Louisiana office and the competitively bid construction contract was awarded to Mike Hooks, LLC, a family-owned business headquartered in West Lake, Louisiana.
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