Port chief: Channel is open

Staff report
Hurricane Francine dumped silt in the Port of Morgan City in a day. Removing it took months.
But dredging succeeded quickly enough to make port Executive Director Raymond “Mac” Wade happy.
On Wednesday, Wade told the St. Mary Parish Council that the port’s channel is back at its authorized depth after rapid work by the area’s congressional delegation and the Army Corps of Engineers. And he said the open channel is good for a growing number of companies doing business along the Atchafalaya and the nearby bayous.
Francine’s landfall Sept. 11 near Morgan City threatened to undo years of work to restore the channel to its authorized depth of 20 feet. The federally authorized width is 400 feet.
Until about 2015, the port was prepared to handle transshipments from large vessels engaged in the import-export business, especially in Louisiana rice.
A series of floods, here and elsewhere, dumped millions of cubic yards of silt in the channel over the next six years. By federal law, 30% of the water flowing down the Mississippi River is diverted into the Atchafalaya at Old River, so even floods in the upper Midwest had an impact here.
But, especially after 2021’s Hurricane Ida damaged port facilities to the east, the federal government stepped up its dredging efforts in the port’s channel, at times putting four dredges to work at the same time.
One dredge stationed here for the long term is the Brice Civil Constructors dredge Arulak, designed to remove sticky “fluff” mud from the water where the river meets the Gulf. The Arulak concept — agitating water to allow the fluff to flow downstream — was untried four years ago, and a series of mechanical problems had to be overcome.
But now, Wade told the council, the dredge can do its work for a fraction of the cost incurred by conventional dredges.
For the first time in years, the port’s channel was at 23 feet. Then came Francine.
Beneath the surface, the hurricane moved massive amounts of silt into the channel, enough to reduce the depth to 13 feet.
“I couldn’t believe we lost 10 feet overnight,” Wade said. “But surveys don’t lie.”
Wade credited representatives in Washington and the Corps of Engineers, which handles dredging work in the federally authorized channel, with quick work. That included diverting the Weeks Marine dredge Capt. Frank to the Port of Morgan City channel.
“The Corps has been our savior, getting dredges over here,” Wade said.
And that is good news for businesses that rely on the channel to do their work or move their products by water.
Wade pointed to Conrad Shipyard, which is building multimillion-dollar vessels that will serve as temporary housing for sailors while their ships are being repaired or maintained; Performance Contractors Inc., which has employed up to 2,600 people to build equipment needed for liquefied natural gas systems; and LAD Services, which employs more than 300 as it converts barges for use in offshore wind energy development.
Some of the material removed by the dredges has been used to create artificial islands that are welcoming to vegetation, Wade said.
Councilman Rodney Olander of Franklin asked Wade if material dredged from the channel might be used to restore Marsh Island. The island, which stretches east to west between the Gulf and the entrance to Vermilion and West Cote Blanche bays, has lost nearly 8 square miles of land over the last century, according to the Governor’s Office.
Dredges can pipe the material that far, Wade said. But such work would be expensive, he said.