Mandatory Levee Inspections Set Back Dallas Toll Road Plans

DALLAS - The time line for building a toll-financed roadway along the Trinity River corridor in downtown Dallas got a 20-month setback Monday.

The city is required to conduct a lengthy and comprehensive engineering analysis of the earthen levee system protecting the western edge of downtown Dallas. The inspections are part of stricter requirements put into place by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers after the flooding of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert said Monday that he will ask the City Council on June 10 to appropriate $29 million for the levee inspection program.

The inspection will cost at least $29 million and is expected to be completed in the spring of 2012.

The city is responsible for the cost of the study. However, it will receive credit for half of the total as its match for other flood control work in the Trinity River corridor.

The Corps of Engineers rated the Dallas levee system as "excellent" in 2006, but on March 31 the 23-mile system was downgraded to "unacceptable" in the annual inspection, using the revised criteria put into place in 2007.

In May 1998 voters narrowly approved the city's $543.5 million general obligation bond package that included $246 million for the Trinity River Corridor Project, which includes several flood control projects and parks. The bonds have been issued.

The bond package included $85 million for the city's share of a reliever road between the levees along the floodplain of the Trinity River to reduce traffic congestion around downtown Dallas, where three interstate highways converge.

The city bonds have financed the design and engineering work.

In 2003 the City Council approved an agreement calling for the North Texas Tollway Authority to build the Trinity Parkway project as a toll road with a combination of city bond proceeds, state highway funds, and NTTA revenue bonds.

The authority had intended to complete the nine-mile toll road in late 2013, but it said Monday that on-site work would be delayed until the Corps of Engineers determines what is needed to ensure the earthen dikes could withstand a flood equal to one the city experienced in 1990.

The NTTA estimates the road project will cost between $1.1 billion and $2.2 billion, depending on which of eight proposed routes is selected.

At a news conference Monday morning, Leppert said that the need for the levee analysis is based on the revised standards, and not on the city's decision to build parks and the elevated toll road within the Trinity River flood plain between the levees.

"The project and condition of the levees under the new standards set by the Corps are separate and apart from each other," he said. "If we never had a Trinity River Corridor Project, we'd be in the same situation."

Leppert said that if the levee report could be completed by the spring of 2012, work on the flood control projects would be delayed by 10 months, while the toll road project would be delayed by 20 months.

"This is an extremely aggressive schedule, and it will take all the agencies working closely together and hitting all the intermediate deadlines to make," he said.

The earthen levees were built in the late 1920s with proceeds from $23.9 million of bonds issued by the city, Dallas County, and the Dallas County Levee Improvement District No. 5.

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