Posted on March 14, 2022
For more than 20 years the Acadiana-Gulf of Mexico Access Channel (AGMAC) has been a dream for officials at the Port of Iberia, and for the first time movement has started at the port to finally see the deepening of the channel come to fruition.
Dredging equipment was recently moved into the port by Magnolia Dredge & Dock out of Mandeville to begin the process of dredging the first seven miles from the Port of Iberia to the Intercoastal Canal.
Port of Iberia Executive Director Craig Romero said it will take approximately three weeks to get the equipment hooked up and the process of deepening the channel will take anywhere between eight to 10 months.
The project will see 1.3 million cubic yards of dredge material from the bottom of the channel and will deepen the channel to a depth of 16 feet with a bottom width that is 160-feet wide.
“It will really open up the port to larger vessels,” Romero said Friday. “It will open some doors and bring us some new opportunities for businesses that want to come here without having to go to the Port of Fourchon.”
The nosedive in the oil industry has drastically affected not only the Port of Iberia but the entire economy of southwest Louisiana in recent years. With the possibility of deepwater offshore vessels being able to come to the port, the AGMAC project is hoped to increase the productivity of the port.
The first phase will stretch over seven miles, from the intersection of the Commercial Canal and Rodere Canal at the Port of Iberia to the transition between the Gulf Intracoastal Water Way and Commercial Canal.
The long-term goal of the AGMAC work is to have the channel dredged to a 20-foot depth from the port to the Gulf of Mexico.
The Port of Iberia advertised bids for the $10 million project last year and was able to completely fund the project with state funding. In addition to that amount, Romero said the Corps of Engineers also required lowering three pipelines into the channel that cost the project an extra $21 million.
“Once this segment is complete we will have spent close to $40 million to do all of it,” Romero said.
That won’t be the end of the project, however. Romero said he is already eyeing this year’s legislative session with the hope that talks for funding for the final phase of the project will begin.
That phase, if approved, will fund a dredge from Intracoastal City all the way to the Gulf of Mexico.
“It’s very exciting,” Romero said. “This is something we’ve been trying for over 20 years.”
