New covered canals now drain water from New Orleans subdivision

The U. S. Army Corps of Engineers and its local partner, the New Orleans Sewerage & Water Board, recently built two covered canals that will alleviate flooding in New Orleans' Broadmoor neighborhood.

The canals are part of the three-parish SELA (Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control) project. The contractor was James Construction Group LLC, formerly Angelo Iafrate Construction.

The Napoleon canals are one of four SELA projects in the area. Three are complete and completion of the fourth is expected in September. The new canals, or box culverts, triple the capacity to move rainwater beneath the 3,150 ft. of Napoleon Avenue between South Broad Street and South Claiborne Avenue. They parallel a similar covered canal placed in service in 1910.

"There is an important difference between old and new canals," said Col. Peter J. Rowan, district engineer at the Corps' New Orleans District.

"Ninety percent of sinking in the surrounding neighborhood forced us to build the new canals 5 ft. lower than the existing one," Rowan said. "This should be a lesson to those who take lightly the flood threat to south Louisiana on the basis of the past. A lot has changed."

The Corps' Stan Green said the loss of elevation had been slowly robbing the existing system of the gravitational force that made it work so well in the past.

"The storm drains are now below the top of the old box culvert. That means you can't fill up the old box," said Green, who is the senior project manager of the three-parish SELA project.

East Baton Rouge Parish gets bonds for sewerage disposal works

East Baton Rouge Parish will benefit from $45 million in bond issues approved at a recent State Bond Commission meeting, $20 million of which will go toward the construction and acquisition of sewers and sewerage disposal works.
"We've got a number of good projects in the works across the state, and even though they vary in cost and scale, the end result is the same - more jobs and more growth for Louisiana," said State Treasurer John Kennedy. "These projects position East Baton Rouge for even further developments and improvements."