CPRA’s largest Lafourche coastal restoration project ever

With data showing that Port Fourchon is hustling and bustling as much as ever, the next step toward sustaining that progress is protecting it.

And as a study says Port Fourchon is outputting more money than ever before, the largest construction contract and restoration project in the history of the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority has been awarded to protect it.

Last week, the authority announced it awarded a $145.7 million contract to Weeks Marine for the construction of the second increment of the Caminada Headland Beach and Dune Restoration Project in southern Lafourche Parish.

“This announcement comes on the heels of the updated economic study of the port which confirms that business at the port is booming,” Lafourche Parish President Charlotte Randolph said in a released statement. “Protecting our coastline and shoring up our defenses near Port Fourchon is critical to our sustainability as a parish.”

Officials agree projects like these are vital to the survival of the economic hub that Port Fourchon has become, according to industry expert and the author of the economic study Dr. Loren Scott.

“At least 90 percent of the platforms and the rigs in the Gulf of Mexico are serviced out of Port Fourchon, so if for some reason Port Fourchon went away, there was some major hit, major hurricane that wiped it out, there would be all kinds of problems associated with that,” Scott explained.

The second increment of the project will work in concert with the first increment, which is currently nearing completion and is also being constructed by Weeks Marine. The two increments together will restore a combined 13 miles of beach and 792 acres of beach and dune habitat between Port Fourchon and Caminada Pass, the waterway on the western edge of Grand Isle.

The second increment will be slightly bigger than phase one was, covering seven miles instead of six and 489 acres instead of 303.

The first increment is scheduled for completion later this year, and CPRA Executive Director Kyle Graham told The Times he expects construction of the second increment to last between 14 and 18 months once it begins in 2015.

“We’re pretty excited to get it moving. We think it’s a tremendous benefit for the region,” Graham told The Times.

The Caminada Headland Beach and Dune Restoration Project has been in the state master plan and was authorized for construction by the Louisiana Coastal Area Program as part of the Water Resources Development Act of 2007.

Funding for the second increment came via federal criminal penalties stemming from the BP and Transocean Deepwater Horizon settlement, Graham said.

“They were dedicated by the settlement to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. They established this Gulf Environmental Benefit Fund, and those funds were set aside specifically for barrier islands and/or diversion projects in the master plan,” Graham explained. “… The Caminada Headland project is an example of the great strides we are making in our coastal program to get dollars on the ground quickly to effect change.”

The state directed $40 million in surplus state funding and $30 million in Coastal Impact Assistance Program funding toward construction of the first increment.

The projects represent the first time in state history that sand has been dredged from an offshore shoal in federal waters of the Gulf of Mexico to restore habitat on a barrier shoreline. By the time the projects are completed, more than 8 million cubic yards of sand will have been dredged at a borrow site called Ship Shoal, which is 27 miles into the gulf.

“Utilizing offshore sand sources is a major accomplishment,” CPRA Project Manager Brad Miller said in a released statement. “Ship Shoal contains large amounts of barrier island compatible sand and provides a reliable source of sand from outside the system for current and future barrier island projects.”

Among the Caminada increments, West Belle Pass Restoration Project and future East Timbalier Project, more than $250 million in restoration funds is being spent in Lafourche.

The Caminada Headland Beach and Dune Restoration Project in Lafourche is part of a greater project protecting the perimeter of the Barataria Basin. Since 2007, other barrier island and headland restoration projects in the area have included Pass Chaland, East Grand Terre, Pelican Island, Shell Island East and Scofield Island representing about $223 million of restoration work. Work on Shell Island West and Chenier Ronquille will begin as early as spring of 2015, according to CPRA.