After Two Near Floods Since 1997, La. Prison Farm Levee Finished

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By Associated Press

Published: 06/27/2003

Louisiana's maximum-security prison farm, which survived close calls with flooding in 2001 and 1997, is now protected from Mississippi River flood surges by a strengthened levee.
Cathy Fontenot, spokeswoman for the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, said the recent completion of the project marks the first time the prison's 21-mile levee has met federal standards since the facility began housing inmates in 1901.
The new levee will be dedicated June 25 in a ceremony attended by officials with the state Department of Safety and Corrections, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Louisiana National Guard.
The levee held in 2001 and much of the flooding was from rain swamping the farmland worked by inmates. But a pumping system kept buildings dry and the levee held.
The 1997 flood damaged the levee significantly but emergency patchwork kept the river from slicing through into the middle of the prison complex.
Corrections official warned that it would be a logistical and financial disaster if flood waters forced the evacuation of the prison farm, which houses more than 5,100 inmates as well as 600 employees and their families.
The prison has about 1,800 employees in all. Its farms produce more than 4 million pounds of vegetables and the complex houses more prison industries than any other Louisiana prison.
The cost of a flood induced shutdown of prison industries and transfer of inmates to other correctional facilities likely would coast about $250 million, Fontenot said.

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