BATON ROUGE - The City-Parish has partnered with the Louisiana Department of Transportation to wash the sound walls alongside Interstate 10 in parts of Baton Rouge.

They've enlisted the help of LA Drone Services, a Lafayette-based company, to use its drones to wash the walls over the next 10 to 12 days and nights.

"This is a partnership between the City-Parish and DOTD, so the state put together $25,000 and the City-Parish put up the rest, so we're right at $50,000 for removing the vegetation and spraying the walls to remove the algae," Lon Vicknair, Chief of Staff for the EBR Mayor-President, said.

The city says this version of softwash will allow for efficient cleaning without disrupting daytime traffic.

"Certainly, it allows us to be on the side of a roadway, not have people on the side of the roadway. The fewer people we have on the side of the roadway, the safer it is for the people doing the work and the drivers that are passing them by," Vicknair said.

Some of the work will require overnight lane closures set to begin Wednesday, pending final approval from DOTD.

EBR says that in order to find out about specific times and locations, people should follow DOTD's official announcements and use caution when traveling through work zones.

LA Drone Services said it got the job almost two months ago by bidding on the project.

"I got an email from the city. These walls have been dirty. It's never been cleaned before. Vegetation has taken over the walls. Dirt, algae, and mold have been on the wall for decades," LA Drone Services' Jordy Marks said.

The City-Parish says that the drone company's bid was the most cost-effective that they received.

Marks credited the fact that the company didn't need manlifts and scaffolds to do the work, and it could do everything from the ground with drones as to why their bid was successful.

"We've been out here since Monday, and we should expect to be out here for about another week and a half. Our work consists of all the way from Acadian (Thruway) down to the I-10/12 split right here," Marks said.

LA Drone Services has crews removing the vegetation from the walls in order to properly wash them. When WBRZ met with the company on Tuesday afternoon, it was washing walls just past the College Drive I-10 on-ramp.

Its drone was connected to a hose, which stretched to a truck where it got water and cleaning materials from.

"It's tethered with a three-quarter-inch hose. Our trailer is outfitted with some high-tech motors, and we can shoot probably about 40 feet away from the wall," Marks said.

The drone can shoot about 300 PSI. LA Drone Services said it has done work in Baton Rouge before, having washed the Raising Cane's River Center.

"We got two more projects this week with Tiger Stadium. They want to get some things cleaned there to get ready for the Texas A&M game, so we're going to send some other crews out there," Marks said.

Marks says that some of their previous projects include humanitarian and disaster response work. One project Marks talked about was the major flooding in Kerrville, Texas. He volunteered his drones to assist in search and recovery efforts.

"I was on vacation in Florida when I heard the news. People were tagging me on Facebook. I always donate my time and my service because we have the capabilities of a company. We have high-tech drones to do search and rescue. I drove down there and stayed down there for about two weeks," Marks said.