Billions of dollars in new money for coastal projects in Louisiana is on the way. But as 10/12 Industry Report details in a feature from the new issue, work to enhance and protect the state’s fragile coastal regions has been going on for years.
Greg Grandy is a senior environmental manager for Coastal Engineering Consultants in Baton Rouge. His firm worked on the feasibility study for the state and the Army Corps of Engineers for the restoration of Caminada Headland, a 14-mile stretch of beach east of Port Fourchon. Over the past century, Caminada annually has lost an average of 35 feet of shoreline, according to the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority.
The work began in March 2005, and the study was supposed to be ready by September of that year, Grandy says. As you might expect, that year’s infamous hurricane season blew away the original timeline.
“A lot of the folks we were working with,” he says, “obviously, their priorities shifted.”
But now the project is back on track. More than 3 million cubic yards of sand is being dredged from a shoal at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico and taken by tugboat-powered barges to the project site, where it is pumped out onto the beach. Native plants will be installed to help hold the sand in place.
Once restored, the beach should help buffer Port Fourchon and La. 1—a key hurricane evacuation route for Grand Isle and other communities—from storms, while providing habitat for nesting and migrating birds. This project is one tiny skirmish in Louisiana’s permanent war with the sea, and companies like Grandy’s are on the front lines.
“It’s an exciting time to be in the business, because there are opportunities today that weren’t available five, 10 or 15 years ago,” he says. “There are great problems to solve, and great challenges.”
Now, as BP and Transocean begin to pay for natural resource damage—along with criminal and civil penalties—associated with the 2010 Gulf oil spill, an unprecedented infusion of new dollars are on the way.
Read the full feature. Send your comments to editor@1012industryreport.com. And be sure to check out more stories from the current issue of 10/12 Industry Report, including the cover story in which the magazine sits down with each of the four leading candidates for governor to discuss their plans for addressing industrial issues if elected.
