By LEONARD GRAY

LULING – A dedication ceremony is contemplated in March for the Davis Freshwater Diversion Project, almost five years to the day after the initial contracts were awarded, according to the project’s overall project manager for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Jack Fredine.

“By the end of February, we should be demobilized,” Fredine said.

The latest holdup in the project, located solely in St. Charles Parish, is “the oyster problem.”

There were 147 oyster lease holders in the area south of Lake Salvador toward Little Lake and Barataria Bay. Fredine said 145 of these opted to settle up by the end of 2001, leaving but two still unresolved.

One of the disputes is between contending owners and the other is caused by a delay in relocating oysters from Little Lake toward Barataria Bay.

That holdup has been because sending freshwater from the Mississippi River through would flush saltwater out of the area, killing the oysters. However, the purpose for the project itself is precisely to flush out the marsh and enable it to restore and replenish itself, helping in hurricane protection at the same time.

“We run the risk of lawsuits by damaging the oysters,” he said.

Another holdup was caused by the bankruptcy of River Road Contractors, but that project segment was since completed.

The freshwater diversion structure itself, located at River Road and the Mississippi River was a complicated procedure, which entailed the replacing of River Road and U.S. Highway 90, along with the Union Pacific and Burlington Northern railroads to their original beds, as well as the Cypress Bayou levee along the westward sweep of Cousins Canal toward its outlet at Lake Cataouatche.

The overall project broke ground in June 1997, and was expected to be usable by late spring 2001 and completed in fall 2003.

Now, the project is nearly done, with only monitoring of the salinity levels planned during the next four years.

The diversion structure itself, a $12.7 million contract awarded in March 1997, was completed in April 2001 at River Road between Ama and Luling near the site of the original Davis crevasse, or levee break, of March 1884.

That crevasse ripped a thousand-foot gap in the levee on the upriver end of Louisa Plantation, which became much of Ama, and the downriver portion of Davis Plantation. The crevasse also destroyed Thomas Sellers’ rice crop at the upriver Lone Star Plantation and left behind Davis Pond.

The $104.8 million project was to construct a gated channel to divert fresh river water toward Lake Cataouatche, Lake Salvador and the Barataria Basin to reduce salt water intrusion.

The aim is to help preserve and protect wildlife and fisheries habitat, provide additional hurricane storm-surge protection and fight coastal wetlands loss.

However, public access will be quite limited, Fredine said, as there are no plans for boat launches, fishing piers or picnic areas in the project. “It is not a new way to get to Lake Cataouatche,” he stressed.

The diversion project includes four iron-gated 14 x 14-foot gated box culverts. An inflow channel 535 feet long by 85 feet wide will direct river water into this structure, while an outflow channel more than 11,000 feet long and 120 feet wide will direct the water into a 9,300-acre pond area west of U.S. 90.

A pumping station, located east of Willowdale Road, has three natural-gas powered pumps capable of pumping 190 cubic feet per second.

Fredine said the difference will be perhaps three inches in Cataouatche and one inch in Salvador.

Control of the diversion structure’s operation will be managed by the “Davis Pond Advisory Committee,” including representatives from St. Charles, Jefferson, Lafourche and Plaquemine parishes, and will also include fishermen, landowners and representatives of state and federal agencies.

The state Department of Natural Resources will have salinity-monitoring stations all the way to Grand Isle and, when the gates need to be opened, DNR will direct it through the parish’s Department of Emergency Operations.

Funding for the construction project and for its ongoing operation was divided between federal and state sources, 75 percent of it federal. It is

estimated use of the diversion structure will provide $15 million in annual fishing benefits and help preserve more than 50 square miles of marshlands.

According to Fredine, Louisiana has 40 percent of America’s wetlands but 80 percent of its annual wetlands loss. He added that every second, an average of 30 square feet of wetlands is lost in this state.

“We have an 11-square-mile loss every year now,” Fredine said. “This will cut it to 10 miles a year. That’s a 10 percent improvement.”

What will be necessary, though, to truly protect and preserve the Louisiana coastline is a $15 billion project to reconstruct the vanishing marsh.