Dredging should boost import-export business

Port of Morgan City leaders are just two months away from starting a dredging demonstration in the Atchafalaya River Bar Channel that they hope will bring back the import-export shipping business to Morgan City.
Buildup of sediment in the Bar Channel halted all trips by import-export ships to the Port of Morgan City in September 2015. Import-export ships made 20 visits to the port since August 2014. An economic impact study showed that each time a ship visits the port, there’s a $300,000 impact to the community.
Planters Rice Mill of Abbeville exported rice to Haiti from Morgan City, and PMI Nutrition International, a subsidiary of Land O’ Lakes, imported sea salt and exported grain through the port.
“There’s no reason why we can’t take one (ship) in every five or six days,” Wade said.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has awarded the dredging demonstration contract to Manson Construction, Morgan City Executive Director Raymond “Mac” Wade said. The company will use a hopper dredge, named the Dredge Newport, that’s self-propelled, Wade said.
This hopper dredge is the same one used in a 2002 10-day dredge demonstration in the Atchafalaya River Bar Channel.
The dredge should be on site in the Bar Channel by mid to late April and will cover an 8-mile stretch of channel where the most fluid mud or “fluff” accumulates, he said. Dredging will take about two months. The Bar Channel is about 22 miles long and begins roughly 20 miles south of the Port of Morgan City dock.
The dredging method should cost about $50,000 to $60,000 per day. Port officials believe they can build their own hopper dredge “very similar” to the Dredge Newport and save almost 70 percent of the cost, Wade said.
“Everything revolves around this test,” he said.
Morgan City is a “niche market” for 3,000 to 6,000 ton shipments, he said. The port can take up to a 600 foot long ship when the channel is dredged.
Bigger ports don’t want to deal with small quantity shipments because “it’s too much hassle for them,” he said. So
Lack of channel depth also affects the oil and gas industry because companies have to use tugboats just to get their ships to dry dock, Wade said.
Wade gets calls on a weekly basis from companies wanting import and export goods out of the Port of Morgan City. But, the depth in the Bar Channel isn’t adequate to handle those ships, he said.
“We could use that business right now,” Wade said.
The Corps allocates money to dredge the Port of Morgan City’s surrounding waterways, including the Atchafalaya River Bar Channel. The channel is congressionally authorized to be dredged to 20 feet deep, but fills up with 6 feet to 7 feet within two months of dredging. High water this winter has also brought more sediment into the Bar Channel, Wade said.
In late November 2015, the Corps of Engineers allowed the port to stop dredging of the channel to save the rest of $13 million annual dredging money to use it for the demonstration, Wade said.
Within 60 to 75 days after dredging, the channel fills up with sediment to the level it was at before dredging. The Corps uses a cutter-head dredge, which costs $120,000 per day.
“Let’s see if we can find something that can operate at a lot cheaper price and keep this thing maintained 365 days a year,” Wade said.
Port leaders will do intense surveying of the channel regularly during the dredging demonstration, he said. During the demonstration, Wade will be concerned about what the density of the material being sucked up from the channel is and not the actual depth of the channel.
Results of that demonstration were “promising” showing that regular dredging could lower the density of the sediment at the channel bottom, Wade said.
Two arms on the dredge will drag along the bottom of the channel and pump out the mud like a vacuum cleaner and put the sediment in suspension, Wade said.
All the experts Wade has talked to say that the hopper dredge should be a viable option to keep the channel dredged, he said.