(The Center Square) – Louisiana officials expressed concern on Monday about a project to build a new Mississippi River Bridge south of Baton Rouge, which will now be delayed another few months.
The Capital Area Road and Bridge District met to discuss progress on the new bridge, which is to be located at one of three sites under review south of the Horace Wilkinson Bridge, which carries Interstate 10 into Baton Rouge.
The proposed bridge will connect State Routes 1 and 30 near the town of Plaquemine, but is a year behind schedule and is only in the environmental evaluation phase. Lawmakers have appropriated $400 million for the project, which is likely to cost at least $2 billion.
District officials heard from project managers from the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development and Atlas Technical Consultants about the project status, which is now in the environmental impact phase.
Christina Brignac, the assistant administrator of Critical Projects for the Transportation Department, said “with some hesitancy,” that the National Environmental Policy Act phase, which requires public meetings, should start in mid-July and that should take a year to complete.
Originally, the Transportation Department estimated the policy would be complete by spring of 2026.
“There’s several questions on how we’re going to mitigate some of these impacts and the control of access to LA30 and LA1. So we want to get those worked out first,” Brignac said. “We want to make sure we have those tie-ins and impacts mitigated before we initiate NEPA.”
She also said that the Federal Highway Administration, if the problems aren’t resolved, could force the department to retract its letter to start the federal approval process until the issues are mitigated. She also said that conceptual design takes time and that the Transportation Department and Atlas want to “get that right” before going to the public meeting phase.
Iberville Parish President Chris Daigle, one of the district commissioners, wasn’t buying the explanation.
“All this sounds like to me is continued delay, continued delay, continued delay,” Daigle said. “When I first came on last year, we were almost supposed to be at the completed end of NEPA now and here we are being delayed again because of what I’m being told is delayed task managers or mitigating the impacts on LA1 and LA30 and it seems like that should have already been done before now.”
The bridge, with three possible locations, will add another river crossing in the Baton Rouge metropolitan area and is projected to cost at least $2 billion.
There are three sites being considered, with the northernmost crossing at River Mile 206 involving two tower foundations. The other two alternatives, at River Miles 202.8 and 202.1, requiring three main towers.
Phase one of the project, which included an enhanced planning study, concluded in the summer of 2022.
