Cattle are herded on the banks of Schooner Bayou, where a shrimp boat came to rest and a work boat is passing by following the destruction of Hurricane Rita in 2005. (Photo by Bruce Schultz, LSU AgCenter)

In the aftermath of Hurricane Rita in 2005, traffic makes its way along La. 82 at Esther in Vermilion Parish, where Hurricane Rita's tidal surge pushed an estimated 8 feet of water several miles inland. (Photo by Bruce Schultz, LSU AgCenter)

News Release Distributed 09/16/15

CAMERON, La. – It’s been a decade since Hurricane Rita ripped through southwest Louisiana, and recovery has been a long, difficult process for many who have lived in the coastal area.

Farmland and pastures were inundated with saltwater from the storm surge. Numerous homes were flooded or washed away, bringing a drastic change for thousands of people who had lived along the coast for decades.

The town of Cameron was hardest hit. Its seafood industry was decimated. Docks were destroyed, and the only ice house was knocked out of commission.

Kevin Savoie, LSU AgCenter and Louisiana Sea Grant agent in Cameron Parish, said a new facility for commercial fishing being built along the waterfront includes an ice house, processing facility and public dock. The $4 million project is being funded with a Community Development Block Grant, and the Cameron Parish Police Jury has partnered with a private firm to run the facility, he said.

The ice house is a big step to revitalize the local seafood industry, Savoie said. “That, along with the need for some public docking facility, has really held things back.”

Cameron previously drew larger offshore shrimp and fin-fishing boats. “We do not see them in port at Cameron anymore,” he said.

Cameron has shrunk in other ways. “We lost about 80 percent of our population,” Savoie said. A town that counted 2,200 people in the 2000 census is down to about 400.

Residents moved north in the parish to Grand Lake, with others moving to nearby parishes. “Our population in the parish went from below 10,000 to 6,400 or 6,300, with most of them north of the Intracoastal Waterway,” he said.

Some residents who relocated still maintain cattle herds along the coast, but cattle prices are too high for most to be able to afford restocking, Savoie said.

A few years of drought hurt marsh grass growth, and that affected cattle, he said. Rice acreage in the Klondike and Sweet Lake areas has returned to production.

The noxious water plant giant salvinia was wiped out by the saltwater pushed inland by Hurricane Rita, but now inland waterways are choked with the invasive species. “In the last two years, it came back, and we’ve got giant salvinia everywhere,” Savoie said.

The area alligator population was hurt by the storm, but only temporarily. “It’s as healthy as it’s ever been,” he said.

The depressed oil industry has affected the Cameron economy, he said, but that could be offset by the anticipated construction of two facilities to export liquefied natural gas, resulting in billions of dollars in construction.

When people moved out of Cameron, some schools were not rebuilt, and now Johnson Bayou and South Cameron high schools are the only two along the coast.

The devastating effects of hurricanes Rita and Ike on homes and commercial buildings resulted in a revamping of the construction permit process in the parish. “Permitting is pretty strict,” Savoie said. “The parish has hired people to do building inspections, and they’ve adopted an international building code.”

Homes that were elevated and strengthened withstood Hurricane Ike that hit three years after Rita, Savoie said. But the cost of living is higher in the Cameron coastal area because of expensive property insurance.

Savoie said Hurricane Audrey differed from Rita and Ike in a significant way: Audrey claimed more than 400 lives, while no one died in Cameron Parish from Rita or Ike.

Savoie’s father and grandmother were the only two of eight people in the family home to survive Hurricane Audrey. “I can’t imagine having to go through losing your home while having to deal with losing family members,” Savoie said.

The Cameron Parish Courthouse endured Audrey, Rita and Ike, and parish officials are starting to renovate the two-story structure after relocating parish government offices, Savoie said.

The LSU AgCenter extension office was temporarily located in northern Cameron Parish, but it has been moved back to Cameron in an elevated building.

Andrew Granger, LSU AgCenter county agent in Vermilion Parish, said roughly 10 percent of the Vermilion Parish rice acreage was grown in southern part of the parish, and much of that has not been returned to production since Hurricane Rita.

If rice prices were higher, farmers probably would have resumed planting in the vulnerable area after the salt levels dropped, he said.

But the area has never produced high rice yields. A harvest of 35 162-pound barrels an acre was considered good for that part of the parish, so with low prices and low yield potential, farmers are reluctant to try a crop in the area, Granger said.

Cattle grazing on the marsh was a major part of the parish economy, Granger said, and the floodwaters of Rita probably hurt them the worst. “Some people are just getting brave enough to go back down there.”

After the storm, cattle owners bought or rented higher ground where evacuation would be easier.

Older farmers near retirement age got out of the business, Granger said. And some large cattle operations with several hundred head chose to fold rather than rebuild their herds and fences.

The Pecan Island public school closed, and much of the population moved further inland, Granger said.

To the north, many residents elevated their homes. Granger’s home was flooded by hurricanes Rita and Ike. “I had 3 feet of water in my house for Rita and 2 feet for Ike,” he said.

LSU AgCenter and Louisiana Sea Grant fisheries agent Mark Shirley said the crawfish industry in Vermilion Parish has recovered.

Crawfish can tolerate low levels of salinity, he said, but the soil in southern Vermilion Parish fields was too salty to grow vegetation that crawfish need. “Now, most of those fields are back into production.”

Alligators were affected for a couple of years, but the population has recovered, he said.

The shrimp industry at Intracoastal City has recovered from the storm, with new facilities that include a dock and ice houses, Shirley said.

“The shrimp industry faces new challenges worse than the storms,” Shirley said, explaining that shrimpers are facing low prices because of cheap imported shrimp.

Shirley said the storm damage in Delcambre created the opportunity to rebuild the infrastructure there.

LSU AgCenter and Louisiana Sea Grant fisheries agent Thomas Hymel said Hurricane Rita inflicted a painful injury to the area’s seafood industry. “Hurricane Rita really brought us down to our knees in our area.”

Many Delcambre residents have adapted also by elevating their homes above flood levels, Hymel said.

The seafood industry responded positively with help from the AgCenter, Louisiana Sea Grant and the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. “It was like a new starting point,” Hymel said. “Those that were left behind were the survivors.”

The effort included a new Seafood Direct facility at Delcambre to help fishing boat owners sell their catch directly to consumers at a new dock and pavilion. “It just really opened the doors to a new era,” he said.

The new start included looking at different ways of selling seafood. “We looked at the model of Alaska’s seafood industry,” Hymel said. “We’re 10 years behind them, but we’re finally on track. Delcambre was our proving grounds.”

What has been done in Delcambre is now considered a model for other coastal areas, he said.

“That’s the legacy that comes out of this,” Hymel concluded. “We saw opportunities and went after them.”

LSU AgCenter area aquaculture agent Thu Bui said the number of fishing boats dropped after Hurricane Rita because many owners weren’t able to afford to repair their vessels.

“We had a lot of derelict boats that washed ashore,” she said.

Federal funds were made available to remove boats from land. But the money could not be spent if the boats were on private property, Bui said, so some of them remain out of the water.

Processing plants in Intracoastal City were badly damaged by Hurricane Rita, and recovery was a long ordeal. Freezers that stopped working were full of seafood that went to waste, Bui said.

Many people in the seafood business had to leave their boats, she said. Public facilities are no longer available for large fishing boats to dock in preparation for a storm.

“Ten years later, and we still have that problem,” she said. “That’s something the LSU AgCenter is working on now.”

One proposal is for a docking area near Palmetto State Park south of Abbeville on Bayou Vermilion.

“We’re lucky the next big storm hasn’t come through yet,” she said. “It’s just a matter of when this will happen.”

Bruce Schultz