how bad is west houma supposed to get

I don't think anyone really knows. I would bet that Savanne Road will go under near the rifle range and also between 311 and Rouses. There has been so much development and constriction in the drainage system since 1973 that no one can give that answer. Lets just hope it is much less than the max of 5' predicted.

Does the MLK area get anything?

any flooding going to happen in Lafourche parish?

Looking at my in laws house on the elevation map, his front yard is -.225. I don't know if I like the idea of them babysitting my kids. He lives right next to the levee of the bayou dumar, which is at elevation +6.2!

quote:

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bayoudude

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You seem a bit uneasy today! Buy an extra 6 pack on the way home an slap the ole lady on the arse when you walk thru the door.

I'm just looking out for your well being.

Bayoudude has nothing to worry about until Martin gets his stick out on HTV....then it is serious.

So Mathews and Lockport is going to get water from Lake Fields via the Intracoastal? What about the lock between Lake Fields and Houma in the Intracoastal?

Let's just say Vernon better get deuce ready.

Since this got missed in the anchored thread, thought I could throw it in here. Lotta trust in the Corps!
Got this in an email.


"Hello All

I would like to address the Inundation Maps recently produced and released by the Corps, specifically as they impact areas in our district in the Raceland to Larose area.

I was a bit taken aback by the inundation maps that the Corps put out over the weekend. At first glance, it appeared to me that the Corps was unaware of the levees that we have in these areas. We have no federal levees in our District. On Monday, I contacted the Corps to try to schedule a meeting with the Hydrologist and the GIS folks who put the map together to find out exactly what they knew and did not know when they put the maps together. Before the end of the day, I had the meeting scheduled for 10:00 am Tuesday in New Orleans. Later in the day Monday, I was able to get the same maps in a different file format from GOHSEP which included an “abstract” indicating some of the assumptions that were made on that map.

I met with the Corps and found out they did exactly as I suspected.



1) They were unaware of the levees we have in some of the areas where they show having 1-5 or 5-10 feet of water over ground in the Raceland, Mathews, Lockport and Larose. They did not therefore include them in their analysis and mapping effort. We discussed the alignments of these levees and agreed to provide them with GIS information so that they could include this in future maps.



2) The basic hydraulic approach used to indicate water from the Atchafalaya River, heading along the GIWW to the Lafourche area was pretty standard and likely a good estimation of the water surface elevations we could potentially see in our area. Basically, they assumed a 5’ water surface elevation at the GIWW near Morgan City and sloped the water to the west (and east.) Going west along the GIWW, they assumed a 3’ elevation in Houma and they carried this 3’ water surface elevation to Larose.



3) Given the time that this high water level will be present, they extended this water level (again without any of our levees being considered) to the 3’ contour of surrounding land north and south.



4) They then subtracted LIDAR based ground elevations from this projected 3’ water surface elevation to project the depth of the water over ground. In mapping this, and purposely to prevent the maps from being too precise, they colored anything that indicated a 0-5’ water depth as one color, anything that had a 5-10’ water depth as another color and so on…. Again, this was done without any knowledge of our levees.



5) As such, what we are really looking at is the potential of having a sustained 3’ water surface elevation acting on all of our levees in the event of the 50% opening of the Morganza Spillway. Our levees have withstood this before. Levee elevations are typically higher than this 3’ potential water elevation. The two areas west of Mathews and Lockport are the Raceland prairie area where the ground elevations are below sea level; but, the areas are surrounded by ring levees that exceed 5’ elevation. So, they would not be flooded by a 3’ water elevation on the outside.



6) They indicated that the maps were not intended to be looked at that closely and were much more of a broad brush look. I showed them the newspaper articles. I said, the articles say the maps show potential of flooding 5-10 feet west of Mathews and Lockport. Indeed they do.

In conclusion, I believe it is imperative that the residents in the central Lafourche area should maintain their diligence and not let their guard down. However, based on the information beyond the maps, we are projected to see a potential of water elevations slowly rising to a 3’ elevation along the levee systems. We will have time to continue monitoring the situation and address any weaknesses as they develop. In areas outside the levee system (gravity drainage areas) we will see water backing up into areas that typically do not have water. But, I believe given the slow rate of the encroachment of this water, the Parish and the NLLD should be able to stay ahead of these issues with traditional flood fighting methods.