First-of-its-kind grant could reduce flooding, rebuild wetlands in this vulnerable part of Louisiana

A first-of-its kind federal grant will be used to reduce flood risk and rebuild lost wetlands in an area of St. Bernard Parish where homeowners have had to file repeated flood insurance claims.

The $21 million wetlands restoration project could reduce future flood damage within the parish's portion of the east bank hurricane levee system by millions of dollars, the Federal Emergency Management Agency says.

And state and local officials are touting FEMA's $14.8 million share of that project as the first time the agency has used its Flood Mitigation Assistance grant funds for a major nature-based marsh restoration project targeted at reducing hurricane storm surge flood damage.

"This unique funding structure between the state, the federal government and St. Bernard Parish should serve as a roadmap as we explore all available funding avenues in order to complete projects that restore our coast and increase protection for our coastal communities," said Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority board chairman Gordon "Gordy" Dove, in a joint state and parish news release.

Gov. Jeff Landry said "transformative projects like this one are essential for protecting our coastal communities, providing community resilience, and reducing flood risk. This type of cooperation at every level -- federal, state, and parish -- is imperative to the continued success of Louisiana's coastal program."

The project targets an area of open water and broken marsh outside the levee system between the northern rim of Lake Lery and the villages of Poydras and St. Bernard inside the southernmost part of the east bank hurricane levee.

About 3 million cubic yards of sediment will be dredged from the lake to create 400 acres of new wetlands and as the base for a new armored earthen embankment along the lake's northwestern edge.

A 2.4-mile section of the lake's embankment will be armored with a 4-inch-thick concrete mattress overlain with geotextile fabric to protect it from wave and storm surge erosion.

Much of the targeted wetland area became open water as a result of storm surge erosion during Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and later storms. The new open water area has allowed new tropical storms and other weather events to create surge and waves that threaten the post-Katrina hurricane levee.

By closing the broken part of the lake shoreline and recreating wetlands in the new open water area, officials hope to reduce the effects of surge and waves on the levee system.

FEMA said the project holds the promise of reducing future repetitive flood damage to residential and commercial buildings within the east bank hurricane levee system by millions of dollars.

"The long-term implications of this work benefit the entire region," FEMA said in a statement, including helping to protect 11,340 National Flood Insurance Program policyholders in the St. Bernard area.

FEMA said 357 structures in the area have been reimbursed for severe repetitive losses over the past 20 years, and another 134 structures were reimbursed for less severe repetitive losses. In all, the targeted area in the parish has seen 9,920 claims totaling $1.23 billion, FEMA officials said.

FEMA awarded St. Bernard Parish the $14.8 million grant to cover much of the project's construction costs last week, with the grant administered by the state's Governor's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness and the parish responsible for 25% of its cost. The parish had already invested $1.3 million of its own money in engineering and design, while the state Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority is adding $4.9 million.

State officials pointed out that FEMA's Flood Mitigation Assistance program is reserved for "projects that reduce or eliminate the risk of repetitive flood damage to buildings insured by the National Flood Insurance Program." Most such grants underwrite the cost of so-called "nonstructural" projects, including elevating, acquiring or relocating homes or floodproofing businesses.

FEMA's support of the natural-resource-based project comes at a time when funding for restoration projects by various programs funded by fine money from the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill is beginning to wind down. Indeed, this project was originally proposed by the federal-state Trustee Implementation Group for the BP spill's natural resource damage assessment program, but had been rejected in favor of larger projects.

"St. Bernard Parish government is proud to have worked closely with our federal and state partners to develop a new approach to funding large-scale coastal restoration projects in Louisiana," said John Lane, executive director of the parish's Coastal Operations office. "We think that leveraging new funding sources like FEMA FMA will become increasingly critical as Deepwater Horizon-related funding eventually comes to an end."

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers also is expected to consider such projects as hurricane risk reduction alternatives in at least two ongoing investigations. The first is its review of ways to restore wetlands destroyed or damaged by the construction and operation of the now-deauthorized Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet.

The second is a study authorized by Congress of ways to increase protection of areas within the levee system from hurricane storm surges that have a 0.5% chance of occurring in any year, a so-called 200-year storm. The existing system was designed to protect from a 1% surge event, a so-called 100-year storm.

In recent years, the Corps has proposed a number of nonstructural projects for areas threatened by hurricanes instead of or in addition to levees. A key example is the plan to elevate about 4,000 homes and to floodproof a number of businesses in Calcasieu, Cameron and Vermilion parishes instead of building levees.