The following is the third in a series of articles examining Hurricane Isaac’s impact throughout the River Parishes and beyond.

By ROBIN SHANNON

L’Observateur

HAHNVILLE – St. Charles Parish President V. J. St. Pierre said his parish dodged another bullet and escaped serious damage from Hurricane Isaac but added that the storm stressed the need for a protection levee, particularly on the west bank.

St. Pierre said the parish opened its Emergency Operations Center the Sunday morning before Isaac made landfall, following a sudden change in the storm track, which saw the storm track shifting about 256 miles to the west. The storm stayed over the region for more than 50 hours as it slowly

“If Isaac had tracked any further west, our west bank residents would be dealing with the very thing that LaPlace is dealing with,” St. Pierre said. “The west bank can only handle about a 3 1/2 foot storm surge, and we were expecting 6 to 8 feet. The levee is critical not only to protect our homes and businesses but also the $10 billion in industrial assets.”

St. Pierre said he is confident a west bank levee will be complete sooner rather than later. He said the parish has acquired permits for phase II and added he is hoping to get permits for the third and final phase by the end of the year.

“We have money in the bank, about $22 million, to build it,” St. Pierre said. “We are hoping to go out for bid on phase II this year.”

As for the east bank, St. Pierre said the challenge is still monumental. Although a large portion of the east bank is now protected from Lake Pontchartrain with newly built floodwalls and pumps, he said residents west of the Bonnet Carre Spillway toward St. John the Baptist Parish still have no barrier. He said about 10 homes in the Montz area reported some flooding.

“I felt a little disappointed with the River Region’s recent trip to Washington D.C.,” he said. “We talked to a lot of aides who really didn’t understand our struggle. I think there has been more dialogue, but nothing is going to happen until after the election. Only time will tell.”

St. Charles was the only parish in the region to call for a mandatory evacuation of residents. St. Pierre said part of the reason behind the alert was because of plans to block both U.S. 90 on the west bank and Airline Highway on the east bank. Hesco baskets were moved into place to block the threat of floodwater. He said the parish determined that about 15 percent of the residents of the parish left based on water consumption levels.

“I got a lot of flack for calling it, but we are always going to err on the side of caution,” he said. “Both of those roads are major evacuation routes. If contraflow were enforced, where would our residents have gone?”

St. Pierre said he is working with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Jefferson Parish to come up with ways to prevent this from happening. He said one of the possibilities is building up Airline Highway at the parish line to keep one parish from flooding the other.

“We want to build a swail so that if Jefferson floods it stays on their side, and if we flood it stays on our side,” St. Pierre said.

St. Charles received some unfortunate news following the storm as the parish’s Emergency Preparedness Director Scott Welchel resigned to take a similar job at Dow Chemical, but St. Pierre said the department will weather that storm.

“Scott will be missed, but we will get another guy in there quickly,” St. Pierre said. “The Office of Emergency Preparedness has a lot of experience, and they all know how to do the job efficiently.”