L’Observateur

LAPLACE – The St. John the Baptist Parish Council on Tuesday awarded a pair of engineering contracts for federally funded coastal restoration projects to improve eroding lake shorelines in Reserve and Pleasure Bend.

The two projects, which involve shoreline protection along the Reserve relief canal and the western side of Lac des Allemands, will be funded through the state’s Coastal Impact Assistance Program. St. John Parish is one of 19 Louisiana parishes eligible for the program, which uses federal funds for coastal improvements. Following a three-month selection process that involved requests for professional qualifications, St. John Parish administration officials recommended the work to URS Corp. of New Orleans and GSA Engineers of Baton Rouge. The firms will oversee design, construction and completion of both projects.

St. John acting Chief Administrative Officer Buddy Boe said terms of the contracts are set, federally mandated procedure and were not immediately available.

Boe said the parish received nearly $6 million in CIAP grants for the projects in 2008 and had selected Davezac Consulting Engineers of Destrehan to manage both projects. Those contracts were terminated in September on the recommendation of St. John District Attorney Tom Daley because of the firm’s ties to former Parish President Bill Hubbard.

According to federal court documents, the firm had given Hubbard money to help him buy a car just before being awarded a separate parish contract. Hubbard has since pleaded guilty to bribery charges in connection with the exchange. Davezac’s owner, Ray Davezac, is also facing federal charges and has pleaded innocent.

According to parish documents submitted to Gov. Bobby Jindal’s office, the Reserve relief canal project, which will be handled by URS, calls for the restoration up of about 1,400 linear feet of shoreline near where the canal empties into Lake Maurepas. The project includes a rock dike with gaps for fish and public access to the lake. The work has an estimated price tag of about $2 million.

“The shoreline erosion in that area has resulted in the loss of about 15 acres of land over the past decade,” Boe said.

The Lac des Allemands project, which will be manned by GSA, consists of a reinforcement of about 7,500 feet of shoreline on the western part of the lake from the Pleasure Bend area to Pointe Aux Herbes. Contractors will add a rock dike and plant new growth to slow erosion, which is occurring at a rate of about 2.9 acres per year. The parish is devoting more than $3.7 million in CIAP funds to the project.

Boe said when the parish originally applied for the CIAP money the request included a third restoration project for the Manchac area shoreline. He said that project has since been picked up by the Army Corps of Engineers, who will engineer and fund the $3.8 million project themselves.

Boe said bidding for construction on the projects could begin as early as the fall of 2010, with actual construction starting sometime in mid to late 2011.