Boost for The Water Institute of the Gulf

The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced yesterday that The Water Institute of the Gulf was one of several recipients of funding from the National Coastal Resilience Fund.

According to their official announcement, the $500,000 grant to the Institute will be leveraged with private funding from Chevron, Shell, Danos as well as the Greater Lafourche Port Commission to move forward with the ‘Partnership for Our Working Coast’ initiative.

Future Port Fourchon improvements will result in millions of cubic yards of dredged materials that should be put to beneficial use.

The Partnership for Our Working Coast was formed in order to use best available science to design where that material could be placed for the maximum benefit.

The project will take one of Louisiana’s most valuable coastal restoration resources – sediment – and use science and community input to determine where it can best be used to provide infrastructure protection, ecosystem habitat and community benefits.

The funding will go towards the next phase of the ongoing project and will include participatory modeling where stakeholders work with computer modelers to merge science and local knowledge, data collection, evaluation of Blue Carbon (carbon sequestration) potential through inclusion of expanding mangrove vegetation, and producing a preliminary project design in coordination with Port Fourchon’s project timeline.