Barge $carcity to cost La.

At least 10 major Louisiana coastal restoration projects that rely on dredged material are planned over the next three years. The needed ingredients (salt water and river silt) will be more difficult to deliver because the dredges needed to dig up and move it are increasingly scarce, according to the commander of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ New Orleans District. “What we’re seeing right now is a massive demand on a limited dredge fleet,” said CoE’s Col. Stephen Murphy. “So as the state looks to do a lot of coastal restoration projects … what I foresee is increasing competition. With that limited supply and increasing demand, it won’t surprise me if prices go up.” Some of those projects include marsh buildup of Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge (New Orleans East, the LaBranche wetlands near Kenner, and bulking up the wetlands that protect Port Fourchon, the service hub for most Gulf of Mexico oil and gas production. The CoE is the country’s best customer to a small, mostly privately owned dredge fleet. In the region, only about 20 of the cutterhead dredges preferred for large-scale projects are available. But the potential workload of the CoE and Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority projects exceeds the region’s dredge capacity for the next 35 months, according to a recent CoE assessment. The lack of dredges is likely to delay and/or bust the budgets of several projects. “These restoration projects are our first line of defense,” Murphy said. Because the projects are so important, the state plans to pour an extreme amount of money, time and effort into them. (Source: NOLA.com 10/11/20) https://www.nola.com/news/environment/article_97a4e59c-0a72-11eb-931f-53ecee442e18.html