The Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development (DOTD) has been officially authorized to conduct an environmental assessment for the $2 billion Mississippi River Bridge project. Estimated to take a year to complete, the design phase will follow soon after. While the construction date has not yet been set, officials estimate that the bridge may be open to the public by 2033.
The Federal Highway Administration’s (FHWA) approval represents the project’s most significant step forward, allowing the DOTD to engage with public and stakeholder entities for the planning process.
Throughout the assessment, the department will investigate and determine what environmental impacts the project would have on the local ecosystem. Should there be any significant impacts, the DOTD would then conduct a more comprehensive environmental impact statement before the project could continue.
A clean bill of environmental impacts would give the state the green light to move into the design phase. Currently, the project vision is to build a connector roadway between LA 1 and LA 30 south of Baton Rouge. A bridge over the Mississippi River will be the project’s cornerstone, providing an alternative route for emergency evacuations, increasing capacity and enhancing connectivity.
The DOTD has drafted three potential alternatives for the bridge, each located in a different section of the river. While all bridges are relatively similar in design, they vary by length, spans and connections to local roads. The completed environmental assessment will provide officials with the insights needed to finalize the project’s preferred alternative.
Photo by WClarke, CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0, from Wikimedia Commons
