The environmental study to determine the site of a proposed Mississippi River bridge that would connect east and west Iberville — and reduce traffic for the thousands of industrial workers in the region – could come earlier than expected.

That environmental study could be completed by the first part of next year, DOTD Secretary Dr. Eric Kalivoda said at last week’s meeting of the state Roads and Bridges Committee.

Completion of the study allow final selection of the location in early 2024 rather than summer.

“It’s interesting to see how they’re moving along that quickly,” Kalivoda said.

Meanwhile, uncertainty looms over how much – if any – the next governor will support the project.

State lawmakers last year allocated $300 million for the initial phase of the project, but the bridge has a total estimate price tag of at least $1.5 billion.

Kalivoda has said that the bridge will require a toll.

Parish President J. Mitchell Ourso said he has talked to one gubernatorial candidate and told him the concerns about the project.

The project has been a major goal for Ourso since he took office in 1997.

He said his endorsement of a candidate in this fall’s gubernatorial candidate will weigh very heavily on support of the bridge.

Some residents along the Eastbank remain concerned about the location of the bridge and its impact on the area.

Resident Laura Comeaux, who spoke at the meeting, voiced concern that one of the sites could harm her cypress forest.

Final decision on the site is expected by mid-2024.

The state Department of Transportation last May narrowed the number of prospective sites from 10 to three.

One site is on the north end of Plaquemine, while the other two prospects are south of the city, about eight miles from White Castle.

The continuous growth of the petrochemical industry on both sides of the river has created thousands of jobs for residents across south Louisiana and has pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into the state economy.

It also has brought much more traffic to both sides of the river.

Atlas Technical Consultants and the Capital Area Road and Bridge Commission narrowed the megaproject to three sites, which helped the project secure the $300 million in initial funding from the Louisiana Legislature in last year’s regular session.

Atlas and the commission worked for the past year to whittle the project from more than 30 sites down to three. The sites were dotted along a four-parish area – Ascension, East Baton Rouge, Iberville and West Baton Rouge – 62 miles along the Mississippi River from the Wilkinson Bridge (the new Mississippi River Bridge) up to the Sunshine Bridge, south of Donaldsonville.

Original Article April 5, 2023 • Source: Plaquemine Post South

BATON ROUGE – Traffic is an everyday headache for the residents of Baton Rouge. Several projects are being done by DOTD to help solve the city’s congested roadways, including a new Mississippi River Bridge.

“We have a three-pronged approach for dealing with traffic in Baton Rouge. One of which is to widen I-10 through town. Second is a south bridge and third is a north bypass. We’re focused on the I-10 widening project and the south bridge once those are underway we’ll look into the north bypass,” DOTD Secretary Eric Kalivoda said.

The bridge comes with a massive price tag of $1.5 billion dollars. So far the project has received $300 million in state budget funding. However, the budget alone will not cover the cost of the bridge.

“It will be a toll bridge and those tolls are expected to generate from $250-300 million, so we do have a fair amount of money. It’s not enough to do the whole thing but it’s a good starting point,” Kalivoda said.

The project has been narrowed down to three potential sites for the bridge and is currently in the environmental impact phase to determine which site is the safest and most effective route.

“These have to go through extensive environmental evaluation before narrowing it down to what’s called the preferred alternative. Within the next year, we’ll have a preferred alternative identified and then we can go ahead and complete the environmental process and move on to implementation,” Kalivoda said.

The environmental impact of one of the proposed sites is drawing concern from residents of Iberville Parish like Laura Comeaux. She says that one of the sites would put her cypress forest at risk.

“I’m hoping that when they get boots on the ground and really do the environmental review, that they see this forest for themselves and decide to eliminate it as one of the three options and to consider the public’s opinion and the private landowner as highly as they do the industry,” Comeaux said.

A location for the bridge is expected to be decided on by the summer of 2024. 

Original Article by Tristyn Turner on March 27, 2023 • Source: WBRZ

BATON ROUGE- Legislators heard progress on the new Mississippi River Bridge project to hopefully alleviate bad traffic in the Capital Region.

As of now, everything is on schedule with the project, but that means residents will have to wait until 2024 until any construction can be done. 

The final location of the bridge has been narrowed down to three possible places, all of them in Iberville Parish. 

Fred Raiford is on the bridge projects committee, and says there needs to be an environmental study before a final location can be picked and construction can start. 

Michael Eby lives in Iberville. He told WBRZ, the traffic can be really bad sometimes, and is glad the the bridge will be coming to Iberville. He just wants it now. 

“They should have been finished with that years ago. At the rate they’re going I don’t know if I will ever see it,” Eby said. 

WBRZ asked Raiford if he was concerned that the bridge will not be built in East Baton Rouge Parish. He told us a bridge in Iberville should still help out with traffic in Baton Rouge.

“That was what the original study determined,” Raiford said. 

Many on the east side of the bridge like Barbin Graham tell us traffic is awful. 

Graham told WBRZ a new bridge can’t come soon enough. 

“I wish they would pull the trigger. They have been talking about it for 25 years, so I wish someone would just make a move,” Graham said. 

Original Article by Nick Perlin on December 12, 2022 • Source: WBRZ

BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) – Multiple different potential routes for a new Mississippi River bridge in metro Baton Rouge were whittled down to just three on Friday, May 27.

All three possibilities cross the river between LA 1 and LA 30 in Iberville Parish. State officials say input from the public was vital in their decision about the final three possibilities. Further studies will be conducted to determine which plan will ultimately be used.

FULL MAP

Here are details of each plan:

• PLAN 1: Crosses river between LA 1 just south of Plaquemine near Old Evergreen Road and LA 30 just south of the EBR/Iberville Parish line near Anytime Fitness, which is about two miles south of where Bluebonnet Boulevard connects with LA 30.
• PLAN 2: Crosses river between LA 1 near the Shintech main access road and LA 30 just south of the EBR/Iberville Parish line near Anytime Fitness, which is about two miles south of where Bluebonnet Boulevard connects with LA 30.
• PLAN 3: Crosses river between LA 1 near the Shintech Plant main access road and LA 30 at Gordon Simon LeBlanc Drive near the St. Gabriel Community Center.

One big issue that remains is exactly how to pay for the bridge. Ultimately, a combination of state and federal funding will contribute to the cost. But state officials say they also plan to make it a toll bridge, meaning drivers will have to pay to cross it.

Representatives with the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development (DOTD) and Atlas Technical Consultants recommended three of the previous 10 alternatives for a new Mississippi River crossing between Baton Rouge and the Sunshine Bridge. The three alternatives were presented to the Capitol Area Road and Bridge District (CARB-D).

DOTD said it will now move forward with refined analysis of the three alternatives, which is needed to complete the federally-required environmental impact study.

The three sites are all in Iberville Parish with connections on the west side of the river south of Plaquemine, and on the east side of the river in St. Gabriel.

Original Article by WAFB Staff on May 27, 2022 • Source: WAFB

BATON ROUGE – Monday, the Capital Area Road and Bridge District met to get updates on the new bridge, only to find little progress had been made.

The list of potential locations, squeezed down from over 30 to 17, is now back up to 20 after the firm in charge decided it ruled out three prematurely.

West Baton Rouge Parish President “Pee Wee” Berthelot became a little frustrated with the move backward.

“People want to know why you need to study it so much, why study, study, you get tired of studies, and it’s hard to give them an answer, particularly when you seem to be edging forward, and then now we’re going backward. I think now we should be around maybe six or seven routes on the table right now,” he said.

Even after a location is secured, federal funding still needs to be allocated—the state expecting a billion dollars for bridge work over five years, but more than three billion is needed to fix the state’s current bridges.

So far, no priorities have been set.

“We have not submitted a priority list because we are still waiting on rules and regulations,” Sec. Shawn Wilson said.

The firm in charge is still anticipating the list of locations to be narrowed down to three by the summer.

The list of potential locations, squeezed down from over 30 to 17, is now back up to 20 after the firm in charge decided it ruled out three prematurely.

West Baton Rouge Parish President “Pee Wee” Berthelot became a little frustrated with the move backward.

“People want to know why you need to study it so much, why study, study, you get tired of studies, and it’s hard to give them an answer, particularly when you seem to be edging forward, and then now we’re going backward. I think now we should be around maybe six or seven routes on the table right now,” he said.

Even after a location is secured, federal funding still needs to be allocated—the state expecting a billion dollars for bridge work over five years, but more than three billion is needed to fix the state’s current bridges.

So far, no priorities have been set.

“We have not submitted a priority list because we are still waiting on rules and regulations,” Sec. Shawn Wilson said.

The firm in charge is still anticipating the list of locations to be narrowed down to three by the summer.

The next step in the process is getting public input.

—
Original Article by Bess Casserleigh • Source: WBRZ

BATON ROUGE – It’s the same story, a different day: drivers fighting bumper-to-bumper traffic on the Horace Wilkinson Bridge. 

“The traffic is terrible, every day the I-10 bridge is backed up, LA 1 where we live in WBR parish is backed up 2 to 3 miles every day. It’s just a constant traffic thing we need to handle. Prolly should’ve handled it years ago, but we’re still fighting it today,” Riley Berthelot, West Baton Rouge Parish President said. 

One day, the Capital Area Road and Bridge District hope it will become a thing of the past. They held a meeting Monday to further discuss a potential location for a new bridge. 

The general area for the project is based between the Horace Wilkinson, Sunshine Bridge, Hwy 30, and LA 1.

“We felt it was important to allow the data to drive the decisions and to screen the alternatives. And while it’s very tempting for us to say this is probably unreasonable, this is probably not gonna move forward, we didn’t want to be arbitrary, biased, we wanted to let the data drive the decision,” said one member in the meeting. 

So far, 15 of those locations have been eliminated, and 17 remain. They hope to narrow it down to three or four before the next meeting. 

Another part of the conversation included funding for the project. Lawmakers passed the largest infrastructure bill the state has seen in 37 years. 

“Starting in 23-24, we’re going to take 30 percent of the vehicle sales tax that is already existing now but flowing into the general fund……. that amounts to about 148 million dollars,” a senator said during the meeting.

Once the bridge is built, drivers will most likely have to pay a toll to get across. 

“As Senator Ward said, there is gonna be a toll on this bridge. There’s no getting out of that,” Dr. Eric Kalivoda, Deputy Secretary of the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development said.

As for these plans coming to fruition, it could be another two or three years before a final decision is made.

You can find more information on the project here. 

—
Original Article by Falon Brown • Source: WBRZ

While much attention of late has been focused on the uncertain fate of President Biden’s massive infrastructure stimulus package, currently stalled on Capitol Hill, a congressional committee worked literally through the night Thursday on a separate bill that includes money for specific bridge and highway projects in Louisiana, including a new Mississippi River bridge in Baton Rouge.

U.S. Rep. Garret Graves, R-Baton Rouge, initially requested $1 billion for the new bridge as somewhat of a headline-making political move to draw attention to the amount of money in the infrastructure bill not going toward bridge, road and highway repairs.

While Graves may have wanted to make a point with his request, it survived the marathon markup session, as did several other Louisiana earmarks.

Read on for the rest of the story from the June 10 edition of Daily Report. 
Source: 225 Magazine

Iberville Parish has launched an interactive website leaders hope will strengthen their efforts to convince federal and state officials that any new Mississippi River bridge to address the region’s growing traffic needs happens in their parish.

And, as a bonus, the site gives real-time traffic information to online visitors.

Members of the Iberville Parish Council on Tuesday night were given their first glimpse at the new website from Parish President J. Mitchell Ourso’s administration.

“The site is about getting information out and how to get the public involved so we can stay in the eye of the ‘powers that be’ so Iberville stays in play for a bridge,” the parish’s finance director, Randall Dunn, told council members at the meeting. “Unless someone makes it a priority on the federal level, it’s never going to happen.”

Dunn said the idea for the website was pitched by Ourso, who believes it’s the best way to give the public a visual snapshot of the issue.

“I just had a dream that we need to get our name out here for this bridge,” Ourso said later in the meeting. “We want to be able to control our own destiny.”

A few months ago, Ourso revealed he hired consultants with the TJC Group to lobby state leaders on Iberville’s behalf regarding the proposed bridge. It was a move that received sharp criticism from elected officials in neighboring West Baton Rouge Parish who are convinced their parish is a more logical choice for any new bridge.

West Baton Rouge Parish officials want the decision over where to build a new bridge to be guided by data proving it would ease the growing traffic congestion along La. 1 on the west side of the Mississippi River and not because Ourso may have the political advantage.

But in March, an engineering firm hired by Ourso presented data to parish leaders claiming that two proposed bridge locations in Iberville would decrease traffic by more than 30 percent along the La. 1 corridor between Iberville and West Baton Rouge parishes and divert nearly 10 percent of the vehicles using the Interstate 10 bridge every day.

Read full story
by Terry Jones at the Advocate

PLAQUEMINE — Iberville Parish leaders have said building a new Mississippi River bridge in their parish is the most logical solution to addressing some of the region’s traffic issues. And Tuesday night they had their theory confirmed by a new traffic study paid for by the parish.

The study, conducted by Baton Rouge engineering firm Neel-Schaffer, asserts a new bridge located in Iberville would have the greatest impact on reducing traffic along La. 1 and the Interstate 10 Mississippi River bridge — two pressure points for daily traffic snarls in West Baton Rouge Parish.

The Neel-Schaffer report, which was presented Tuesday to the Iberville Parish Council, claims two proposed locations in Iberville would decrease traffic by more than 30 percent along the La. 1 corridor between the Iberville and West Baton Rouge parish line and divert nearly 10 percent of the vehicles using the I-10 bridge every day…

Read full story
by Terry Jones at the Advocate

If Iberville Parish President J. Mitchell Ourso has a white whale, it’s in the form of a new Mississippi River bridge connecting his divided parish.

It’s elusive prey the longtime parish president has been stalking for years. He wants a bridge to help solve some of the region’s vexing traffic woes, and he specifically wants it built in his parish.

Now, Ourso has turned to consultants to lobby state leaders on the parish’s behalf to see that his dream becomes a reality and to fend off any effort to build a new bridge elsewhere.

“I’m not going to let this happen without Iberville getting its fair share,” he said. “Iberville needs a bridge, and that’s the way it’s going to be.”

Ourso disclosed last week that the parish is spending approximately $2,500 a month on consultants with the TJC Group to help lobby state leaders on the parish’s behalf…

Read Full Article Here
by Terry Jones at the Advocate