When heavy rains dumped 20 inches or more into the Amite River basin in 2016, the floodwaters not only decimated homes and upended thousands of residents' lives in multiple southeast Louisiana parishes, but they reignited calls for a decades-old plan to build a diversion canal from the Comite River west toward the Mississippi River.
Unlike the well-publicized Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion planned for lower Plaquemines Parish, which is designed to funnel sediment into marsh to help slow land loss, the Comite River Diversion would take water from the Comite River — a tributary of the Amite — and send it west, where it would eventually end up in the Mississippi River. The hope is that it would help prevent the type of flooding that happened in 2016.
Such a project was discussed in the 1960s and then again after catastrophic floods in 1983. A 1991 U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Report recommended it be built.
But nothing happened until 2018, when U.S. Rep. Garret Graves, R-Baton Rouge, finally secured federal funding for the project. At the time, officials expected it to cost around $500 million and estimated it would be finished by 2021.
When complete, the canal would reduce flood risks for some 700,000 people, or slightly less than one-sixth of the state's population.
Yet nearly three years after the expected finish date and now costing more than $900 million, the eight-mile Comite River Diversion Canal remains years off.
A precise timeline, however, has been difficult to come by. Earlier this month, Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development Secretary Joe Donahue told a legislative task force that he was not able to give a firm date.
"I am not going to buy into a timeline that I do not have some level of assurance we will be able to meet," Donahue said.
The reasons for the holdup are many. Perhaps the biggest one is the placement of two high-pressure gas lines, owned by Florida Gas Transmission, that cut across the route. The company finally applied for a federal permit to move the lines on July 24, more than a year after it told state officials it would do so.
That permit could be granted in October, but then it will take months to relocate the lines.
Without further delays, construction could take another 2 1/2 years.
The people of the capital region have waited long enough. State Sen. Rick Edmonds, R-Baton Rouge, has said he wants a timetable by October, and we echo his call.
"All we do is meet," Edmonds said. "Our people are tired of meeting."
His frustration is palpable and justified. Major public works projects often take years to complete, but this one has taken decades and two devastating floods just to get started.
We can only hope that another flood won't make Louisianans pay — once again — for the delay.