BATON ROUGE - Now that the project has received nearly $1.5 billion in federal funding, officials say work on the Comite Diversion Canal will begin soon, with a projected completion date by 2021.

The Comite Diversion Canal Task Force members met Wednesday morning at the capitol to get updates on the project’s status.

“I want them to simultaneously work on all of the aspects of this together, not one incremental thing after the other," Representative Valerie Hodges of Denham Springs said. “There's no point of that. That was good for when we didn't have all the money, but we have all the money."

Thosuands of residents have been paying taxes toward this project for more than two decades. According to Hodges, she wants to see things get moving quickly.

“An urgency to get the project done, knowing that we have the money and we have the man power and there is no excuse,” Hodges said. "There’s no more excuses that we’ve got to get this project done to avoid another catastrophe like what we saw in 2016.”

Billions of congressional dollars have been set aside to help fund several state flood mitigation projects, like the Comite Diversion Canal. 

Officials with the task force say they should see significant progress on the project by 2019.