Ports all around Louisiana are in dire straits. Funding in many ports is exhausted.
“The till is about empty in the ports right now,” said Lynn Hohensee, director of the West Calcasieu Port, at Wednesday’s meeting of the Sulphur Kiwanis Club.
Currently, the total amount of funding available from the state is around $23 million, but that represents a shortfall of around $55 million from the projected financial need, Hohensee said. And monies from the state do not even represent a majority of the funds for Louisiana’s ports.
“Seventy percent of the funding in our ports is generated internally from the ports themselves,” Hohensee said. “Thirty percent comes from Baton Rouge.”
That is in stark contrast to neighboring states with port operations in the Gulf. Texas alone has spent more than $1 billion in the last five years for their ports as compared to the $450 million Louisiana has spent.
“The state coffers at the state capitals in Texas, Mississippi, [and] Alabama are much more open to developing their ports.”
And this low level of funding is also not on par with the contributions made by the industry to the state.
A study conducted by Tim Ryan at the University of New Orleans, found that ports have contributed $5.5 million in job revenue, $467 million in tax revenue, and demonstrated a total impact of $33 billion in the state.
“We represent almost one out of every four dollars of gross state product in the state of Louisiana,” Hohensee said.
And for every one dollar invested by the state, six dollars are returned.
“This isn’t a risk,” he added, “We’ve already demonstrated the value we have. All we need is the support to help grow this and increase that return of investment back into the state of Louisiana.”
For a state like Louisiana, the maritime industry is extremely important.
“A lot of states would like to have the geographic blessing that we have received from nature,” said Hohensee. “We’re where the oil and gas are, and we have tremendous waterway resources to help support it.”
The widening of the Panama Canal will also open up more business prospects from Asia, and Louisiana ports cannot afford to falter in the competition for accommodating those containerized vessels. Support from the state could be the difference in such a competitive market.
As well, Louisiana’s waterways, unlike in most of country, require a lot of maintenance and dredging attention, putting a further strain on individual port finances. Southwest Louisiana ports are especially in need considering that there is a lot of silting in from the river off the shoreline and from Gulf of Mexico ‘fluff’ - sediment that comes in with the tides.
