Joseph Cains with Lafayette Connector partners explains the proposed Interstate 49 Lafayette Connector project to residents at an open house at the main library on April 30, 2024, in Lafayette, Louisiana.
Joseph Cains with Lafayette Connector partners explains the proposed Interstate 49 Lafayette Connector project to residents at an open house at the main library on April 30, 2024, in Lafayette, Louisiana.
The final approval document, the Record of Decision, for the Interstate 49 Lafayette Connector is expected around the end of 2025, but some citizens still are concerned about the project’s impact on the environment, especially the city’s drinking water supply.
The 2003 Final Environmental Impact Statement and Record of Decision for the previous Connector plan said precautions would be taken while building the 5.5-mile six-lane freeway with a plan to be prepared later.
A new evaluation of the proposed project began in 2015 because 12 years had passed without construction. The new process resulted in slight changes to the route and exits, so a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement is needed.
A Draft SEIS is expected to be released around the end of 2024. That document will contain information about the project and the studies conducted, including any environmental testing, Deidra Druilhet, public information officer with the Louisiana Department of Transportation for Acadiana, said. It also should identify measures to avoid, minimize, or mitigate impacts.
Public comments on the Draft SEIS will be accepted at a public hearing in the Spring of 2025 and, she said, for 45 days after the notice of availability of the Draft SEIS.
Release of the Draft SEIS will be the public’s first opportunity to see what, if anything, will be done to protect the environment, including the Chicot Aquifer, which supplies Lafayette’s drinking water.
The Connector route selected in the 2003 Record of Decision shows the freeway would run through two known contaminated sites near the former railroad yard near downtown Lafayette.
The Record of Decision also noted that driving pilings or digging in that area could send contaminants into the Chicot Aquifer.
Officials noted special consideration would be given to work near the contaminated waste sites and that it’s possible underground storage tanks along the proposed route have leaked and contaminated areas around them. But the state environmental agency, despite tests showing contamination at the old rail yard, has listed the property as “No Further Action” needed to remediate the materials.
The Record of Decision says a construction plan, to be approved by the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, will ensure contamination doesn’t spread and those measures will be coordinated with efforts to protect the Chicot Aquifer. It doesn’t include details except the depth that piers should be drilled.
The 2003 decision document notes that general impacts from the Connector to water quality in the aquifer and Vermilion River should be no worse than what’s currently experienced from the Evangeline Thruway.
The construction process, it notes, poses a bigger problem.
“Pile driving or excavation operations,” the document states, “with the potential to puncture the existing, confining clay bed, are the most significant project components with regard to potential contamination of the Chicot Aquifer from hazardous waste.”
Some worry contamination from the rail yard already has spread and that contaminants already are reaching the Chicot Aquifer.
Lafayette attorney Bill Goodell in 2016 filed a citizens lawsuit against Union Pacific Railroad on behalf of the Salvation Army and others who own property and businesses on or near the former rail yard, alleging the contamination of the Chicot Aquifer is ongoing.
“Oil is floating in the Chicot Aquifer,” he said. “It’s been discharging probably since they closed the facility, since 1960.”
Testing in connection with the I-49 Connector by the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development between 2020 and 2022, Goodell said, shows contaminants in areas where they previously were not found.
“They found floating oil in the groundwater and they found oil-saturated soil that is a continuing leaching, leaking, seeping threat to the groundwater, including the Chicot Aquifer,” Goodell said. “New data. New violations. New areas.”
Those findings, he said, have not been addressed by the DEQ. A district court judge dismissed the lawsuit, but Goodell on June 4 filed a challenge to that decision, arguing there is new and continued contamination taking place that the DEQ has not addressed.
“The pictures tell the story,” he said. “The cores that were taken of the soil, you can see the oil dripping out of it.”
Michael Waldon, a retired hydrologist and environmental engineer, said railroad companies in other states have been required to pay to clean up contamination spreading under homes and businesses and into drinking water.
Most of the conversation about contamination refers to oil and grease, Waldon said. Findings revealed in lawsuits indicate at least three dozen contaminants in the aquifer.
Some may be more dangerous, Waldon said, like endocrine-disrupting chemicals that may be natural or man-made chemicals that interfere with the body’s hormones. The substance is heavier than water and doesn’t easily dissolve in water, so it tends to fall through the aquifer, he said,
Decades ago, experts believed a clay layer above the Chicot Aquifer was impervious, Waldon said. That opinion has changed, he said, with at least one expert concluding clay layers are not impervious to toxins.
Around 2016, as officials relaunched the Connector SEIS process, former DOTD Secretary Shawn Wilson told residents if contamination is found after land is acquired for the interstate the DOTD will clean it up and sue the railroad to recoup the cost, Waldon said.
Now it sounds like the plan is to clean up contamination just in the area around the bridge piers, spot cleaning, Waldon said. If the city-parish government wants to build basketball courts or walking trails under the elevated section of the Connector, he said, they’ll have to clean the property themselves, which could cost $100 million or more.
“I think when the SEIS comes out it’ll say they’re just going clean where the piers go in and leave the rest of it contaminated,” Waldon said.
Email Claire Taylor at ctaylor@theadvocate.com.
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