Ring levee and pump work at Jean Lafitte
Jean Lafitte lives or floods by its ring levee, and the lifts, gates and pump work on it run in stages year after year. A Jean Lafitte levee job means a unit on the crown road or at the pump station pad, moved along as the crew works the alignment. Nobody on a Jean Lafitte levee crew has time to reposition a restroom themselves, so the driver does it at every visit.
Access down to Jean Lafitte is narrow and single track. We check with the Jean Lafitte foreman which gate is open, because turning a service truck around out there is not always possible.
Elevated houses and Jean Lafitte rebuild work
Half the houses in Jean Lafitte stand on piers now, and the trades here work high: stairs, decking, underpinning and new utility runs. A Jean Lafitte rebuild job takes one standard unit set on shell at the drive end, because there is rarely a firm yard to use instead. Storms reset the Jean Lafitte line every few years. After a bad one the Jean Lafitte work stacks up, so we stage extra units before the season and a Jean Lafitte contractor is not left waiting behind everybody else.
Marsh, water and the Jean Lafitte route
Jean Lafitte is at the end of the road, and getting there means the long run down Route 45 past the preserve and the canals. We build the Jean Lafitte route into the lead time honestly: two days rather than one, and a fixed route day rather than a promise we cannot keep.
Ground out around Jean Lafitte is peat and fill. A Jean Lafitte unit on soft marsh edge leans within days, so shell or mats are not optional, and summer means twice weekly service on any Jean Lafitte crew job.