[StBernard] Coastal Restoration Drives An Industry Boom

[Westley Annis]

Coastal Restoration Drives An Industry Boom

By JESSE HARDMAN
 
Coastal restoration is providing opportunities for a variety of industries
in Louisiana.
This spring a state committee approved $477 million for coastal protection
and restoration. When you throw in federal dollars, and private funding as
well, fixing Louisiana's coast is becoming big business.

Here are some of the people who stand to benefit.

Deep in St. Bernard Parish's Lake Athanasio, a construction crew is hard at
work. Ben Leblanc is standing on a floating barge, overseeing his troops who
are knee deep in marsh, battling enormous horse flies.

LeBlanc is providing the muscle for an experimental oyster reef project.
He's making sure 700 concrete rings get transported and installed in the
marsh. It's a new way to create oyster habitat, and a reef to help protect
these wetlands from storms. "The shoreline is decreasing, this is just a
needle in the haystack of the whole coastline, but it's a start," he says.


LeBlanc has spent his entire life playing and working around the Gulf Coast
ecosystem. As a kid his family ran a shrimp industry supply company. He's
been a commercial diver, a marine contractor, and now he runs LeBlanc Marine
- his specialty is barges. Coastal restoration projects are kind of a new
thing.

"I think it's a new trend of the future, of coastline restoration," he says.
"That you can make money off of saving the environment? That is correct."

With billions of dollars earmarked or Gulf Coast restoration projects over
the next 50 years, there's a lot of work to be done, and a lot of money to
spread around. Engineers, construction contractors, and environmental
consultants are all vying for a piece of this coastal restoration boom.

Researchers are seeing some love too. Sam Bentley is a geology professor at
LSU and the director of the LSU Coastal Studies Institute. A decade ago his
specialty, Mississippi Delta mud diversion, wasn't a big funding priority,
so he packed his things and headed up to Canada for a government research
job. "It was a reflection of what the scientific community in the US
thought. And that's all changed. Sadly it took Katrina and Rita to really
bring the plight of the Mississippi Delta to national attention," he says.

Bentley came back to LSU a few years ago, and the funding is now flowing
from a mixture of private and public grants. Bentley's also part of a group
of researchers that were recently awarded $1.6 million to look at how
coastal erosion impacts families living in the Delta region. Studies like
that can turn into policy... which then turns into private contracts for
industry to do the work, long-term.

"The idea is to be training the next generation of coastal scientists and
engineers, who can essentially turn what we're doing into an intellectual
commodity, which will result in job growth for Louisiana, and the export of
intellectual capital to other places in the US and around the world,"
Bentley says.

Engineers Road in Belle Chase has been a one-stop corridor for offshore
drilling needs. From rig construction, to helicopters to fly out to the
Gulf, even food service. Marsh Buggies Inc. has been on the boulevard since
the 1960s. It makes amphibious construction gear, originally created to help
oil companies explore hard-to-reach coastal places.

 
At the Marsh Buggies warehouse, a crew of welders build a pair of steel
pontoons lined with aluminum cleats. Great for moving construction equipment
into the mud and water of wetland areas. Marsh Buggies sends these mobile
construction devices to oil fields in places like Nigeria and Suriname.

On the Gulf, most drilling has moved offshore. So the buggies here get used
almost entirely for jobs like dredging mud and creating earthen levees.

Jamie Autin is the third generation of her family to work at Marsh Buggies
Inc. Her Grandfather founded the company. "We don't solely market ourselves
that our equipment is only used for environmental properties only," she
says. "But it's definitely a majority of it. I would say a big reason for
that is because the concentration on the environment and environmental work
has become so popular in recent years."

She says her family began working on coastal restoration as far back as the
1980s, when there was a dip in the oil market. The first projects used Marsh
Buggies to dredge canals and rivers, and then move that sediment to help
create new marsh, instead of discarding it.

 
Autin says now coastal restoration projects are developed around the
capabilities of her company's unique equipment. "We financially benefit from
that. It puts our equipment to work, it keeps our people working. It keeps
people employed its good job security for sure."

And if you want some proof, look no further than the front lawn of Marsh
Buggies headquarters. Right below the company logo a sign reads "HIRING...
EXCAVATOR OPERATOR. Apply inside."

Support for coastal reporting on WWNO comes from the Walton Family
Foundation, the Greater New Orleans Foundation, the Kabacoff Family
Foundation, and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.