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AARON F. BROUSSARD
PARISH PRESIDENT
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News Release
Issued By:
Jefferson Parish
Department of Public Information
Jacquie Bauer, Public
Information Officer
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February 27, 2004
For Immediate Release
Grand Isle to host Fifi Island Restoration Dedication
and Multiplex Center Ground Breaking
The Town of Grand Isle, located at the southern end of Jefferson Parish on Louisianas only inhabited barrier island, has a lot to celebrate. Construction of a rock armored containment levee to seal existing breaches on Fifi Island is near completion and work is set to begin shortly on construction of the towns new Multiplex Center. The Town of Grand Isle and the Grand Isle Independent Levee District will be hosting a dedication of the Fifi Island restoration project and a ground breaking ceremony for the Grand Isle Multiplex Center on March 1, 2004. Festivities will begin at 11:00 a.m. at Wayne Estays Seafood Company at the end of Oak Street off Louisiana Highway 1 in Grand Isle, and will continue with lunch at the Grand Isle Community Center. The event is free and open to the public.
Fifi Island runs parallel to Grand Isle and protects the bayside of the developed island from wave action during strong northerly winds, said Tim Osborn, Coastal Manager for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrations (NOAA) Lafayette regional office. Without conservation and restoration, this vital protection would be lost, said Osborn.
The $3 million rock dike was funded in part by a grant from the NOAAs Coastal Impact Assistance Program (CIAP) to the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources Office of Coastal Restoration and Management (DNR) and Jefferson Parish. This is the first of Jefferson Parishs CIAP projects to be completed, said Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard.
CIAP is an important program because it allowed funds to go directly to the local governments for development of targeted projects to address local needs, said Broussard. The parish is working to secure additional funding from Washington so that this type of restoration can continue, said Broussard.
The Parish is using $250,000 of its CIAP award to partially fund this project and the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources is providing $749,625.00 of its CIAP allocation to assist with funding this project. DNR contributed an additional $2 million of Wetland Trust Fund monies for the rock dike project, said John Hodnett, DNR Contract Manager for the dike project.
Restoration of Fifi Island is not only important to Grand Isle but to all of Jefferson Parish due to the fact that the barrier islands are the first line of defense when storm surge from hurricanes threaten inland areas, said Council Chairman John Young. Broussard, Young and District 1 Councilman Chris Roberts are planning to be on hand for the Fifi Island dedication. Roberts, whose district includes most of the sparsely populated wetland areas at the southern end of the parish, said that coastal restoration to protect people and infrastructure is very important to the economic future of the parish. This is a good start, said Roberts, but much more work is needed.
Construction of a rock armored containment levee is the first step of the Master Plan for the Restoration of Fifi Island. The project involved the installation of nearly 5,000 feet of rock dike on a part of Fifi Island at risk of breaching and converting to open water. NOAA, the state DNR Office of Coastal Restoration and Management, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers New Orleans District (USACE-NOD), Jefferson Parish, the Grand Isle Independent Levee District, the Grand Isle Port Commission and the town of Grand Isle have been working together to develop the master plan. Extensive erosion has decreased the actual land mass and lessened the protection that Fifi Island offers the bayside of Grand Isle, said Jeff Pena, project manager for Shaw Coastal, Inc., a consulting and engineering firm hired by the Levee District to oversee the project. The next step is for the Corps to pump dredged material behind the rock dike to create wetlands, said Pena.
The USACE-NOD has developed a Fifi Island Dredged Materials Placement Plan establishing areas to be filled with dredged materials that are tied in to the remnants of Fifi Island. This project is part of the USACE-NOD strategy to beneficially utilize sediments from maintenance dredging cycles of the Barataria Bay Waterway and Bayou Rigaud. The dredged material will be placed at elevations conducive to creating wetlands and a maritime forest on the island. Edmond Russo, a civil engineer with the USACE-NOD, said that the dredge slurry will be used to eventually rebuild 400 acres of Fifi Island.
For more information, please contact Pat Bellanger, Town of Grand Isle at 985-787-3196
or Marnie Winter, Jefferson Parish Department of Environmental Affairs at 736-6440.
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