BATON ROUGE — The state House Committee on Transportation, Highways and Public Works has approved a resolution that would ask DOTD to improve the interstate barrier in Livingston Parish and to take a flood and drainage into consideration when planning changes to roads.
The committee, which met on Monday, April 27th, added the flooding language in an amendment tied to lessons learned the hard way in Livingston Parish, where the concrete barrier along I-12 acted as a dam during the historic 2016 flood.
The barrier, which was built to keep vehicles from inadvertently crossing into oncoming traffic, stopped the flow of water during that flood, leading some properties to be further inundated.
That led to a lawsuit and to policy changes at DOTD to keep the same thing from happening again.
Rep. Roger Wilder, R-Livingston, proposed the concurrent resolution asking that DOTD look at improving the interstate barrier where it runs through Livingston Parish, especially after what happened during the flood.
Rep. Kellee Hennessy Dickerson, R-Denham Springs, and Rep. Paul Sawyer, R-Baton Rouge, worked with Wilder to craft the amendment that specifically urged DOTD “to incorporate drainage capacity, flood risk reduction, and hydrologic connectivity” into projects involving I-12.
Sawyer told committee members that federal attention to that problem has been lacking but DOTD has been more responsive.
“There was an agreement reached with Livingston Parish, the City of Walker, the City of Denham Springs, the Town of Livingston, and DOTD to once and for all address this barrier. And I believe DOTD is trying to sort that out,” Sawyer said.
Dickerson said that anyone with constituents affected by the problematic barrier remembers how badly it affected them.
“God forbid we ever have a situation like that again, and God forbid, and knock on wood, let’s never go there again, Dickerson said.
Wilder told the committee he was pleased to add the amendment, which passed the committee without objection.
The amended resolution then passed, also without objection.
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