(By Victor Skinner/The Center Square) — A project to build a new bridge over the Mississippi River near Baton Rouge is moving into an environmental assessment phase with three alternatives, consultants said Monday.

Kara Moree, project manager with Atlas Technical Consultants, told the Capital Area Road and Bridge District on Monday officials are preparing to move three preliminary alternatives for a new bridge to connect State Route 1 with State Route 30 over the Mississippi River into the environmental assessment phase in the next six weeks.

The work began in July 2020 with 32 potential routes that were reduced to 10 by February 2022 after considering sensitive resources, traffic demand, technical considerations, and input from stakeholders. The potential routes were further whittled to three by May 2022 through a second round screening with stakeholders, state and federal agencies, local governments and residents.

“They are all three in Iberville Parish, … all kind of a little bit north of Shintech, or south of the Shintech gate,” Moree said. “There’s a lot of fieldwork… that’s been going on the last several months.”

That work includes aerial LiDAR data collection by the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development, bathymetric surveys of the river, and data collection on traffic refinement that’s largely complete. Ongoing work involves geotechnical investigations, topographic surveys and subsurface utility engineering, line and grade work, an intermediate toll study, and conceptual bridge design, Moree said.

“We’re doing an intermediate toll study. They’re working on the model now with the toll planning and operation side of things, so we expect that to be ongoing for the next few months,” she said.

The work is in preparation for the National Environmental Policy Act process through the Environmental Protection Agency that will analyze all three alternatives concurrently for various potential issues involving everything from public and agency concerns to wetlands, to cultural resources, to air, noise and impacts on minority populations.

“We have to be very careful about when we start our NEPA clock because new federal regulations we have very specific timelines to complete NEPA once it starts,” Moree said. “We are hoping to kick NEPA off very soon.”

“All of our technical studies thus far, our enhanced planning document … will be posted on our website,” she said.

The intermediate toll study that will be used to analyze financing for the bridge is expected by March, while the NEPA process will launch around late January.

Public meetings will likely begin around May, Moree said.

Lawmakers questioned what Atlas was doing to mitigate concerns about tolling on the bridge, pointing to a recent vote to halt a $2.1 billion plan to build a bridge over the Calcasieu River over resistance to tolls.

Unlike the Calcasieu River bridge, the new Mississippi River bridge is not replacing an existing facility on an interstate, Moree noted.

“Our project, we actually have federal money donated to it, as well, so it’s not the biggest factor in the financial part of our project,” she said. “It’s one piece of the money generator on this project.”