METAIRIE, La. (WGNO) — Recent car crashes into Jefferson Parish canals are forcing parish leaders to think about the addition of more guardrails.
On May 24, a driver, who was later rescued, crashed into the canal at Veterans Boulevard and Club Drive, and about a week later, a woman died after she and her passenger crashed into the canal at Chateau Boulevard and Ronson Drive in Kenner.
Dominick Impastato, Jefferson Parish Council says, “There’s been an outcry from the public for increasing the number of guardrails across the parish. That’s been ten, 15 years in the making if not longer.”
Impastato says adding additional guardrails along the canals in Jefferson Parish isn’t the most feasible project.
“There was a study done to look at putting guardrails around every piece of canal space. The cost was insurmountable. The cost was way more than the appetite for the public would be to dedicate tax dollars to it.”
Some constituents are wondering why federal funds the parish received through the American Rescue Plan Act a couple of years ago didn’t go toward guardrails.
“We didn’t get an unlimited amount of money from the American Rescue Plan and those other sources, so as with everything, if we had an unlimited amount of money available, we could do an unlimited number of things, but we have limited resources, and you’re trying to find, at that point in time, what is the best use of those funds,” Impastato says.
However, the District 4 councilman believes there is a way to fund a project this massive.
“The only way to do it is to create commercially viable spaces that our private sector would be interested in expanding into, whether it’s by residences, whether it’s commercially available properties, things like that,” he says.
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