W H AT ’ S N E X T
T i me to G o Deep B y c h r i s pr i ce | A s pr i nte d i n t h e F ebr u ar y 2 0 1 8 i ss u e of B i z N e w O r l e a n s M a g a z i n e
S outh east Louisiana maritime profess ionals cont in u e t he ir f ig ht to d red ge to 50 feet
T
he 230 miles of the meandering Mississippi River on either side of New Orleans are home to the world’s largest port system. Collectively, the five deep-water ports on the lower Mississippi River — New Orleans, South Louisiana, Baton Rouge, St. Bernard, and Plaquemines — handle more tonnage than any other port in the world, providing billions of dollars in annual economic impact and supporting hundreds of thousands of jobs. Nearly 12,000 ships — including 6,000 oceangoing vessels — travel the lower river corridor annually, carrying 500 million tons of cargo and 700,000 cruise passengers. Those numbers may soon increase, as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has a plan to increase the depth of the Mississippi River to accommodate larger cargo ships built in the wake of the Panama Canal expansion.
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Spring 2018 | Port of South Louisiana
Life on the Mississippi The Mississippi River and its tributaries connect 31 states and two Canadian provinces through the third largest river basin in the world, all of which funnels through southeastern Louisiana. In a 2012 paper prepared for The Ports Association of Louisiana, The Economic Impact of the Ports of Louisiana, LSU economist James A. Richardson said the combined economic impact of the state’s ports, providers of port and vessel services, businesses operating within the ports, and cruise ship operations — most of it centered in the lower Mississippi River corridor — includes almost 73,000 jobs created and supported. It also includes personal earnings of $3.96 billion, and state and local tax collections of $517 million per year with approximately $289 million going to the state government and
$228 million going to local governments. When connected industries — including agriculture, oil and gas, petrochemical and coal products, chemicals and related products, food and related products, paper, wood, and fabricated metals — which rely on the ports to assist in moving their goods are included, Richardson said the figures jump to almost 400,000 jobs and personal earnings of close to $20 billion. Those figures are based on the Mississippi’s current maximum depth, which is supposed to be maintained at 45 to 47 feet, but has been as low as 41 feet in recent years. That has caused some larger ships to unload some of their cargo before they enter the river’s mouth, resulting in delays, increased logistical costs and a reduction in the region’s ability to compete globally by pushing business away from Southeast Louisiana.