Lafourche Parish - Priority Issues

During the early phase of the long term community recovery planning process the community identified priority issues related to five categories. These included economic & community development, environment and coastal, housing, human services and transportation & infrastructure. Through the continued refinement of the planning process the Louisiana Recovery Authority identified a series of nine categories that provided greater differentiation. The priority issues as shown below were developed by the stakeholders in Lafourche Parish using the original five categories, then renamed to match the updated category titles.Early in the planning process the store front had an informal visit from Louisiana State Representatives and Senators and through interaction with these leaders the following statement was given regarding priority issues for recovery - “The “Holy Trinity (of long term community recovery) is 1) Coastal Restoration; 2) Flood Control; 3) Highway Construction for Evacuation and Commerce”. Throughout the planning process, and through on-going contact with hundreds of community members these three topics continued to resonate. The following listing provides a breakdown of priority issues by recovery topic:

Economic and Workforce Development

• Reduce Port Fourchon’s vulnerability to hurricanes by improving highway access in order to maintain its key market position.
• Concentrate civic, community, and legislative efforts on addressing the inequity of Offshore Continental Shelf revenues as they adversely impact Louisiana , especially Lafourche Parish.

Flood Protection and Coastal Restoration

• Coastal Restoration and Protection is a priority and may be accomplished through sediment transport pipes and small diversions;
• Keep upgrading and maintaining levees and local drainage;
  • Morganza to the Gulf levee system
  • Donaldsonville levee system
• Reduce vulnerability of Port Fourchon with projects that use natural and manmade features to create “lines of defense”.

Transportation and Infrastructure

• A north-south evacuation route to I-10 needs to be developed and constructed in the Houma-Thibodaux area.
• The evacuation and commerce route in South Lafourche is susceptible to extreme flooding. In order to prevent this situation, LA 1 needs to be elevated from Golden Meadow to Port Fourchon.
• Due to the traffic operation problem and higher than average accident rates on LA 1 from Thibodaux to Golden Meadow, an access management study needs to be conducted.
• In order to improve the evacuation process along US 90, this route needs to be updated to Interstate standards.
• Emergency communications planning needs to be enhanced and communications hardware should be updated to withstand damages inflicted by Category Five hurricanes.

Housing and Community Development

• Need land and monetary donations for non-profit programs such as Habitat for Humanity
• There is a shortage of housing since the storm, as demand has increased from the influx of hurricane evacuees and recovery contractors
• A degree of housing affordability, for both rental and non-rental units, was lost because of the increased demand and the cost of repair
• Decisions on elevation of structures in flood-prone areas and other building code concerns that also involve FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers are problematic and need to be resolved
• Land Use plans and regulations such as subdivision control and zoning should be considered parishwide
• Public safety planning for emergency evacuations including improved mass transportation access
• Planning for diverse public safety disciplines to work together during response
• Establishing formalized mutual aid compacts Parish-wide and regionally
• Developing emergency communications systems across the entire parish that would not be as vulnerable to storm damage
• Planning and coordinating increased emergency sheltering capacity