New pump station will triple fresh water flow to Bayou Lafourche, protect drinking water

A new pump station will be built in Donaldsonville which will triple the fresh water flow to Bayou Lafourche.

A groundbreaking ceremony over three decades in the making was held Friday in Donaldsonville, where Bayou Lafourche meets the Mississippi River. The original price tag was $65 million, which ballooned into $96 million after regulatory hiccups stalled progress.

This flow of water, officials said, will protect the drinking water supply for Ascension, Assumption, Lafourche and Terrebonne parishes and will combat saltwater encroachment in the Lafourche and Terrebonne estuaries.

"Life is water," said Hugh Caffery, Chairman of the Bayou Lafourche Freshwater District. "This is what people moved here for, and then it was dammed off."

In 1904, water from the Mississippi River to the Bayou Lafourche was dammed off. In 1955, the current 450-cubic-feet pump station was constructed. The new 1,000-cubic-feet per second station will be built alongside it. According to Caffery, materials should arrive Nov. 1, and construction begins shortly thereafter. The project should take about two years to complete and finish near the end of 2024.

"We're going to build to now triple the cubic feet of water that are going to go into Bayou Lafourche, going up to 1,500 CFS, trying to mimic or restore some function that Mother Nature carried out on her own back prior to '19," Congressman Garret Graves said.

This phase took numerous projects in the past few years before the pump station could be created, officials said. These included numerous dredging projects, removing Thibodaux's weir and recreational projects. In total, all the work totaled $168,070,105.

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Water flow through the bayou keeps the ecosystem flourishing. Graves said look no further than 2008, when Hurricane Gustav tore through the region, to see the results from when the flow halts.

"This bayou that provides fresh water to 300,000 citizens, it could no longer be a source," he said. "The water was stagnant. It was disgusting. You could smell it from miles away."

The effect of this got federal dollars rolling, officials said, and started the cascade of projects that have culminated in this new pump station. CPRA, the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, and the Bayou Lafourche Fresh Water District signed an agreement in 2019 to pay for the pump through a $65 million U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Clean Water State Revolving Fund loan administered by Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality.

CPRA has pledged more than $50 million toward repayment of the loan using a portion of future Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act revenues it will receive from offshore federal oil and gas leases. Bayou Lafourche Fresh Water District will repay the balance of the loan with revenues from an existing property tax.

Originally, the money was in place, but red tape halted the process. During the next few years, the estimated costs soared, and new funds had to be found.

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"It was hard to get the funding in place, it was difficult to get go through the regulatory process, and then inflation reared its head, and we had to find $30 million dollars within 45 days," said Kyle R. "Chip" Kline Jr., chairman of Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority.

These excess costs are being covered by CPRA paying $26 million through a combination of GOMESA revenues and Capital Outlay funds as approved by State lawmakers. Bayou Lafourche Fresh Water District will provide an additional $5.5 million of its own funds.

This larger flow of water will help push back the saltwater that would taint drinking water and destroy the vegetation that holds the land in place.

“We’re effectively tripling our capacity for fresh water entering the bayou,” said Bayou Lafourche Fresh Water District Executive Director Ben Malbrough. “Saltwater intrusion is a leading contributor to land loss in this region, and this increased flow of fresh water will be critical in the long-term fight in preserving what we have and aiding in the restoration of what we’ve lost.”

This article originally appeared on Daily Comet: $96 million pump station to triple fresh water flow to Bayou Lafourche