Ribbon-cutting for the river: Port says it's open for business

A traditional ribbon-cutting ceremony welcomes a new business or other enterprise, not the opening of a river that has flowed to the Gulf since before people were here to see it.

But the Port of Morgan City, Brice Civil Constructors and officials from other agencies snipped a ribbon Tuesday to mark the opening of the Atchafalaya River. More specifically, the event marked the opening of the Port of Morgan City's channel after seven years of fighting sediment and mud.

The event was designed to call attention to the fact that the port's channel is back at something close to its authorized dimensions of 20 feet deep and 400 feet wide. Port officials are hoping shipping companies will notice, too, and return import-export trade and the commercial spinoffs to the place they once held in the local economy.

"We're sending the feelers out," port Executive Director Raymond "Mac" Wade said. "We're advertising. This is a big day for us."

Keeping the entire channel open between Morgan City and the Gulf has been a challenge since about 2015, thanks to a series of floods that deposited sediment all along the waterway. But the spotlight Tuesday was on the last 18 miles from Eugene Island south, where the specially built Brice Civil Constructors dredge Arulaq has been at work for more than two years.

Once described as a "science experiment," the Arulaq was specially designed to deal with sticky fluff mud that can foul vessel propulsion systems. When the idea was conceived, in the middle of the last decade, the funding was in place for only one dredging per year in that area, and the mud can accumulate up to 3 feet per month.

"Everchanging river conditions warranted continuous fluff management 24 hours a day, 7 days a week," according to the program for Tuesday's ribbon-cutting.

In the middle 2010s, the Port of Morgan City went through one six-month period in which the port handled 22 import-export vessels, Wade said. The fluff mud put a stop to that level of trade.

Even the large vessels that could make it through the channel would have to limit their cargo to lessen their draft, operating less efficiently.

So they went to other ports, including New Orleans, instead.

The port approached the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which funds dredging in federally authorized waterways, for help with finding a way to keep the Bar Channel, the lower portion of the channel, open. The Corps insisted on an industry day to seek solutions from private companies.

At the industry day, the big companies didn't want to touch the problem, Wade said.

"Then," he said, "I heard someone behind me say, 'We can build it.'"

That was Jon McVay, president of Brice Civil Constructors, based in Alaska.

Brice proposed a dredge that works by agitating the mud and separating it from the water column through a series of pipes. The name Arulaq comes from a native American word meaning agitation.

The Corps of Engineers went along with the plan and offered a contract capped at $21.8 million. Halimar Shipyard in Morgan City handled the vessel conversion needed to put the dredge in action.

And in December 2019, the Arulaq was ready to go to work between Eugene Island and the Gulf.

Only "ready" turned out to be premature. For monthly port board meeting after meeting in 2020, McVay arrived to report mechanical problem after problem. Those problems were made worse by the debris, such as old shrimp nets, on the bottom of the channel.

"The whole year was tough," McVay said.

But at each meeting, McVay pledged to stay with the work. The down time diminished gradually until, by January 2022, the channel was open to 20 feet deep and 250 feet wide and the Arulaq was operating reliably.

At Tuesday's ceremony, the Arulaq ran back and forth along the Port of Morgan City dock, showing what it can do, handling 65,000 gallons of water a minute -- not full speed, just for show.

Lee Dragna, a port board member before he became Morgan City's mayor in 2021, joked that he witnessed "a lot of headache and heartache and fighting over" plans to develop a fluff mud solution.

Like port board President Joseph Cain, whose eight years on the board have been dominated by the fight to keep the channel open, Dragna said he was originally a doubter.

But now the Arulaq works, and the cooperation that made it possible drew praise Tuesday from speakers including Berwick Mayor Duval Arthur, Col. Stephen Murphy of the Corps, and Renee Lapayrolerie, a commissioner with the state Office of Multimodal Commerce.

McVay praised the efforts of the port, the Corps and Halimar.

"We couldn't have done it on our own," McVay said.