Director: Port means business

Investment in the Port of Morgan City is paying off for the local economy, the port’s director told a St. Mary Chamber of Commerce audience on Wednesday.
And the growth no longer depends solely on the energy industry, Executive Director Raymond “Mac” Wade said at a Chamber Business Luncheon at the Petroleum Club of Morgan City.
“We like to think we’re a tremendous economic engine for this area,” Wade said.
He’s told the story at local government meetings all over East St. Mary.
By 2015, the port was beginning to serve as a transshipment point for large vessels in the import and export trade. But a series of floods, which brought sediment down the Atchafalaya River into the port’s channel, struck beginning in 2016, and the federal funding to keep the channel at its authorized dimensions didn’t keep up.
Dredging is expensive, Wade told the Chamber audience. A large dredge can cost $150,000 a day.
The funds began to flow more freely about the time the pandemic hit. Funding for dredging comes from Washington by way of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and dredging has been funded at $50 million level in each of the last three years, Wade said after his talk.
The recent bump in funding has meant that as many as six dredges at a time have been working on the port’s channel, which is now at its authorized depth of 20 feet and width of 400 feet.
Wade said the Corps was a patient partner in the case of the Arulaq, a dredge built by Alaska’s Brice Civil Constructors with engineering by Halimar Shipyard specifically to remove sticky “fluff” mud from the lower end of the port’s channel, from Eugene Island to the Gulf.
The Arulaq agitates the fluff so it can float out to sea. Immediately after the dredge was launched, it was plagued by a series of mechanical malfunctions. But even during frequent down time for repair in the early days, Wade said, it became clear that when it was operating, the Arulaq could remove large quantities for a fraction of the cost for conventional dredging.
Now, Wade said, one of the biggest contracts in the port’s history is about to be let: an estimated $40 million for dredging the waterway between Crewboat Cut and the Boeuf, Chene and Black bayous.
Businesses that rely on water transportation are making use of the newly opened waterways, Wade said, proving that the Morgan City area’s economy has some kick.
“We’re not dead,” Wade said. “The oilfield has shuffled the deck, but more of the stuff we’re seeing has nothing to do with the oilfield.”
One such sector has been shipyard work for the U.S. military. One such project was due for a celebration Friday morning, when Conrad Shipyard’s Amelia facility was to host an event marking delivery of a YMRB vessel to the Navy. Conrad has a contract to build five such vessels, described by the company as “a temporary home away from home and workplace for our service men and women whose vessels are in port for repairs and maintenance.”
The port has also received $30 million in a grant for the west portion of a dock expansion and is waiting on permitting for completion, Wade said.