re: Whatever happened to the planned dredging of University & City Park Lakes?

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If it’s hauled off it gets way more pricey.

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IIRC some has to be hauled off and may be considered waste disposal.

Likely

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BREC is about to sink big $$$ in NBR for the Zoo and redoing the park.

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This. NBR gotta get theirs, otherwise it's racism!

Warning: long post. I’ve followed this topic for a long time, attended many meetings during the pitch phase and public info sessions. I drive by pretty much daily so I think about it a ton.

The lakes restoration project is absolutely massive. Many other smaller projects tie into the master plan, that stem from the thinking of “well, we might as well do a bunch of things at once instead of fix the lakes and then shelf the rest of the ideas”. Dredging and improving the ecosystem are a large part, but quality of life improvement, storm drainage, huge public works projects like bridge rerouting & traffic improvement, etc.

It’s a long term plan. Start to finish on an aggressive timeline would likely be 10 years, more realistically it would be double that. It’s going to hundreds of millions of dollars, but the more challenging aspect is that it’s going to take voters today sucking it up for something they will not get to enjoy. It’s a long term plan that our children and grandchildren will benefit from. Add in inflation since we’ve already wasted time since the study, kickbacks and corruption, contingencies (a lot can go wrong during 5+ years)

Everyone agrees it would be nice to have, but when you zoom in, everyone has an excuse or a “valid reason” to oppose. Why would it be a parish vote to put millions of tax dollars to one location? Central, EBR, Zachary, hell even Shenandoah will all have people that would never use it. Locals that literally live on the lakes have reason to oppose. NBR gets the hundred million dollar zoo, LSU gets the new lakes, what hundred million dollar amenity gets built in other parts of the parish. The smell of everything dying during the drainage process, the eyesore of the mud pit, the nightmare traffic during the excavation -real estate values would crash for a decade until it was done.

Let’s revise the lakes in a huge way so people can use them! Let’s think about parking lots, traffic woes since it’s a major destination now, bike rentals, boat rentals, city tourist attractions, now we’re looking at as much administrative upkeep as we are manual labor.

The grey area of ownership certainly hasn’t helped the maintenance. City owns a few of the lakes in the multi lake system. LSU owns a few. Brec operates a couple parks and trail around. Then there’s the question of who manages the project? Then once done, can all the current agencies involved commit to the larger upkeep and maintenance cost? Do we establish a Baton Rouge Lake Authority funded by a new tax to do those things?

Public funding, private funding, federal funding, ownership, risk liability, sustainability, donor naming rights, public/private operation partnerships, environmental impact studies, traffic studies, endless years of consulting, etc. It’s huge. So huge that it it would take more teamwork and cooperation than humanly possible of the groups involved.

20 years from now it could be completely finished but instead we’ll be having the same conversation we are now. I hope that’s not the case but I’m sure it will be.

Traffic going so fast around the loop will cause the toilet bowl effect, no need to dredge.

We have high enough taxes right now. We can’t afford 200 million to do a massive project centered around the lakes, but we should figure away for BREC to at least dredge the lakes and make it more of a reservoir for heavy rains and a place to enjoy.

And if someone could figure a way to do the dredging and make it part of flood control perhaps it could qualify for federal matching funds.

All the other stuff is over the top considering what our parish can afford.

There are thousands of cypress stumps under the waterline . Traditional dredging apparatus will not work. It’ll be incredibly expensive therefore never happen

Would those old Cypress tree stumps be worth any money?

I’ve probably watched too many reality tree harvesting tv shows.

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That is too much money to fund locally. It works out to be almost $500 per head for every person in the parish. Many simply do not have it. Has anybody looked into getting federal funding?

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That gets into the ‘is it really worth it’ territory? I’m sorry but $200 mil is not worth a 5 mile running loop.

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$200 million would not be worth it

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Where do you get this figure? The estimates came in at $40-45 million ( WAFB) and this includes many cosmetic upgrades such as running/walking paths, lighting, etc.