Help Finally Available for Louisiana’s Hurricane-Weary Fishermen

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For the past two and a half years, Louisiana’s fishermen have relied on their natural gift for resourcefulness and made do with jury-rigged docks cobbled together from hurricane debris and spent countless hours in search of ice and fuel.

The 2005 hurricanes, Katrina and Rita, hit Louisiana’s fishing business perhaps harder than any other segment of Louisiana’s economy. The storms destroyed an estimated $528 million in shrimp docks, marinas, ice houses and packing plants.

Yet, the industry has received limited government help.

“Since the hurricane, they haven’t given us nothing,” said Dean Blanchard, a shrimp dock owner in Grand Isle, a fishing town 60 miles south of New Orleans. “The hurricane is two-and-a-half years ago. Do you know how many ups and downs I’ve been through since then?”

This week, Louisiana officials tried to atone — just a bit — for the lack of help and announced it was distributing $19 million in grants to rebuild a smattering of docks, marinas, ice houses and waterfronts across the coast.

“It’s a drop in the bucket,” acknowledged Tom Henning, an official with the Louisiana Recovery Authority, the state agency set up after the hurricanes to organize Louisiana’s recovery.

But Henning said the grants will serve as seed money to jump-start reconstruction of ruined waterfronts.

To make this point, officials on Wednesday converged on one badly wrecked section of waterfront on Lake Pontchartrain called Bucktown. The state is putting up $2.1 million to bring back a marina in the historic fishing village that, over the years, was absorbed into the urban landscape of New Orleans.

Bucktown was famous for restaurants that served crabs, shrimp and oysters unloaded from boats only hours beforehand and a colorful cast of seafaring old-timers who could recall Bucktown’s bawdier days as the “poor man’s sin capital of the South,” when wickedness was astir in vaudeville halls and rickety gambling houses.

But Bucktown’s boat slips and restaurants with views of masts were erased by Katrina’s storm surge. The neighborhood’s revival has also been stunted by the Army Corps of Engineers’ need to commandeer land in the neighborhood to build a floodgate on the 17th Street Canal, which broke during Katrina and caused much of New Orleans’ flooding.

“It’s an economic beginning to have the boats back,” said Pete Gerica, president of the Lake Pontchartrain Fishermen’s Association who had a hand in getting Bucktown the grant money.

He envisioned a farmer’s market where city folk can go to get some of the best fresh seafood in the country. And, he said, when more fishing boats can tie up that will help the restaurant owners, many of whom are fishermen themselves.

“Hopefully, it will get back to its heyday,” Gerica said of Bucktown. “Just knowing the boats are behind the restaurants makes people feel better. That’s what made the restaurants special: it was from the boat to the restaurant.”

More help is on the way, too, for Louisiana’s fishermen.

The state got $41 million from Congress to help fishermen and that money may be distributed this year. Also, many fishermen may be eligible for $20,000 grants from the state’s economic development department.