The authority, which oversees all state levee and restoration projects, will send the master plan and a recommendation for spending $199 million on levee and wetland projects in fiscal year 2008 to the Legislature for approval during its session that begins April 30.
The Army Corps of Engineers is embarked on a parallel effort to develop a Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Plan to provide alternatives to Congress for how to protect the coast from a "Category 5" hurricane.
The corps will include the state plan in its document, which will be forwarded to Congress in December, and corps Task Force Hope director Karen Durham-Aguilera said the agency will use the state plan as its "jumping off point" for its own plan. State planners are also working on the federal plan, she said.
Aside from a couple of swipes by authority members at several scientists who criticized parts of the master plan in recent weeks, the document was approved with little discussion.
Authority members noted, however, that its Integrated Planning Team, who authored the document, made a variety of changes to respond to many of those criticisms.
Jon Porthouse, who directed much of the work on the master plan, explained that a number of the criticisms resulted from scientists' unfounded concerns that levee alignments on maps in the plan's main report represented final decisions on levee locations by the state.
He said new maps being added to the final printed version of the plan next week will make it clear that no decision has been made on final levee routes. They will include several alternative paths for the most controversial levee proposals.
However, several members of the board made it clear Thursday that they still support the Army Corps of Engineers recommended footprint of the proposed $850 million Morganza to the Gulf of Mexico levee, which would protect 150,000 people in the Houma area from hurricanes.
"It almost looks like sabotage from the scientific community," said authority member Windell Curole, who works for the South Lafourche Levee District, one of the local sponsors of the levee. Curole was upset because the White House has circulated a memo on Capitol Hill that indicates it no longer supports the project, and cites the scientists' concern.
An exasperated Robert Twilley, a Louisiana State University biologist who has been involved in the state and federal levee and coastal restoration plans for several years, said the opposing scientists have attempted to make it clear that while they oppose some specific levee footprints, they believe efforts to improve hurricane protection and restoration must begin immediately.
"We have to move forward," he told Curole. "And the community I work with wants to move forward as much as you do. ... We need to get out there and build projects and have the scientists let us know when we've made mistakes and how to correct them."
Referring to the White House memo, Twilley said the authority members should scrutinize carefully "how government institutions use the scientific community for their own purposes."
Authority Chairwoman Sidney Coffee punctuated Twilley's comment by adding, "... at the very highest levels of our United States government."
The corps recommendation to build the Morganza levee was made before Hurricanes Katrina and Rita hit the state in 2005, and in the storms' aftermath, the proposed levee is being redesigned to meet the corps's new understanding of the strength of hurricanes that can hit the state's coast and the damage they cause.
It's not expected that the redesign will answer the critics, however, who contend that levee could contain vee-shaped areas that direct storm surge too far inland, and that it blocks off too much of the coast's wetlands from adequate water flow.
Corps officials and other scientists insist that the original proposal to build the system as a "leaky levee" with a series of openings to allow water to enter and exit interior wetlands will work. And they contend that the proposed path follows existing natural ridges along bayous that surround the Houma area, thus limiting the area that would be protected.
The critics' concerns may have a better chance to be considered in two other areas proposed for hurricane protection between Houma and the existing West Bank levee system in the New Orleans area.
A significant part of that path crosses open wetlands that several engineers have warned marshes and waterbottoms may be too soft for construction of the much taller earthen levees that would be required to protect from the new understanding of a 100-year hurricane.
Among the alternatives to be included in the new maps are less extensive levees that only ring the most populated areas.
Porthouse said the most recent revision of the master plan also attempts to show more alternatives for large diversions of freshwater into bays along the east and west banks of the Mississippi River.
There still may be additional battles in the future. The annual spending plan also forwarded to the Legislature, which recommends spending about $200 million on specific projects in fiscal year 2008, also recommends supporting a corps investigation of a lengthy levee stretching across southern St. Tammany Parish just north of the Lake Pontchartrain shoreline.
The authority added a second $200 million to the 2008 budget that would come from state surplus funds, a potentially controversial move that also will have to be approved by the Legislature. No specific projects were recommended for that money, but a set of eight rules for how they would be chosen included a requirement that none of the surplus dollars be spent on salaries or studies.
And the authority also approved a corps request to have the state Department of Transportation and Development act as local sponsor for a similar proposal to provide hurricane protection for Cameron, Calcasieu and other western parishes.
The corps will study several alternatives for the west, including one long levee running along La. 82, and another U-shaped levee protecting only the most populated areas.
And while Porthouse said the master plan language for Plaquemines Parish was rewritten to make it clear that the state supports federalizing all existing hurricane levees there, he said the state still expects to see limits on the size of those levees that would require most homeowners and businesses to raise their buildings to be eligible for flood insurance.
More information about the master plan and the annual budget are available on the Web at www.louisianacoastalplanning.org .
Mark Schleifstein can be reached at mschleifstein@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3327.
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