Part of South Airport Road in Abbeville will be closing next month

If you travel on South Airport Road, between La. 14 and Jacquelyn Street in Abbeville, mark on your calender Feb. 2. That is the day part of South Airport Road will close for 45 days.
The section of the road that will be closed will be starting at La. 14 down to Karl Street – next to the old Villa and before the railroad track.
The reason the road is closing is because it will be raised three feet to act as a protection levee for the residents who live in South Airport Subdivision.
For the last year, Glenn Lege Construction has been building a 10.5 foot-high Earth levee along a coulee near the old Villa and along the east side of Lowe’s.
The levee was built to prevent water from overflowing into homes along Cypress Street, Pine Street and other streets along the coulee.
Many homes in that neighborhood flooded because of the storm surges from Hurricane Rita and Hurricane Ike. The coulee empties into the Vermilion River. When the two storm surges hit the parish, the water from Vermilion River made its way up the coulee and flooded a couple of dozen homes in the subdivision.
FEMA agreed to pay for a 10.5-foot high protection levee to stop future flooding. The levee was built behind the homes in the neighborhood. Now that the levee is built, the final stage of the project is to elevate South Airport Road.
Elray Schexnaider is the project manager for Glenn Lege Construction. Schexnaider said he had hoped the project would have already been completed, but due to Mother Nature, the project has been delayed.
Once South Airport Road closes, the alternate route for traffic will be South Hospital Drive, which is less than two miles west of South Airport Road.
The project is being paid for by a $1.4 million Hazard Mitigation Grant
Sellers and Associates are the engineers on the project.