Crossing the causeway you'll see lots of boats and bardges together. That's a project that is building an underground pipeline from Norco to Mississippi that would cross Lake Pontchartrain and cut through St. Tammany Parish The $220 million Parkway Pipeline project is laying a 16-inch line to carry gasoline and diesel from the Valero St. Charles Refinery 141 miles to Collins, Miss., where it will tie into other distribution pipelines,
The pipeline will skirt the far eastern edge of the city near Fontainebleau State Park and Pelican Park, it will travel only 0.3 miles through the city limits, affecting a single property owner.
Company officials said the project would affect around nine or 10 acres of wetlands in St. Tammany Parish and will not disrupt any archeological sites.
The pipeline will run 39.21 miles through St. Tammany Parish and will generate about $2 million in parish property taxes in the first year of its operation, It will have an initial capacity of 110,000 barrels per day, with the ability to expand to 220,000 barrels per day.
The pipeline will follow the levee in the Bonnet Carre Spillway and run along an existing pipeline corridor under Lake Pontchartrain. The pipe will be a minimum of four feet beneath the lake bottom. Neither Carlton Dufrechou, general manager of the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway, nor John Lopez, executive director of the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation voiced any significant environmental concerns about the pipeline.
