Many knock corps gate plan

An overflow crowd of 200 lower Plaquemines Parish residents blasted an Army Corps of Engineers proposal to build a floodgate south of Belle Chasse, excluding their homes from upgrades to provide 100-year flood protection by 2011.

"You're leaving the entire lower end of the parish open to flooding," said Port Sulphur resident Mary Jo Hebert, drawing cheers Wednesday night in a packed cinderblock meeting hall in Oakville. "Contrary to what people might believe, a lot of people live down there."

Corps officials said the general location for the floodgate was mandated by Congress in 1996. But they said residents outside the gate will benefit from a separate $670 million project to raise 34 miles of nonfederal levees protecting their homes.

The assurance did little to cut the tension during a three-hour meeting marked by frequent catcalls.

The dispute centers on the corps' plan to link the eastern end of the West Bank hurricane protection system to the Mississippi River levee. The proposal includes a floodgate across Louisiana 23 in Oakville, four miles south of Belle Chasse.

Many residents said they want the gate to be moved at least eight miles south to include hundreds of homes in Ollie, Jesuit Bend and Alliance.

Saying there has been significant development on lower Plaquemines' west bank in the 13 years since Congress authorized the levee tie-in project at Oakville, one man urged the corps to conduct a new cost-benefit study of extending flood protection farther south.

Others took exception to a corps report describing areas south of Oakville as "pasturelands and scattered citrus groves."

Robin Zuvich of Jesuit Bend presented a slide show of structures outside the proposed floodgate, including Belle Chasse Middle School, the Conoco Phillips refinery and Riverbend Nursing Home. She said the area includes more than 600 homes, with many valued at more than $300,000....