John Albrecht, 58, top left, stands on the rigging of his skimmer boat on Wednesday, November 17, 2021 as he watches Tommy Dinh, center, of Tom's Marine & Salvage run ropes around it as they prepare to pull it out of the water to salvage it ever since it sunk during Hurricane ida. (Photo by Chris Granger | The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate)
A maze of net rigging where fishing boats were pilled on each other near Lafitte on Wednesday, November 17, 2021. Tommy Dinh, right, of Tom's Marine & Salvage gets help from Charlie Brown as they try to salvage the boats months after Hurricane Ida. (Photo by Chris Granger | The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate)
Fisherman Rolland Phillips watches as boats are lifted out of the water near Lafitte on Wednesday, November 17, 2021. Many boats in the area sank during Hurricane Ida. (Photo by Chris Granger | The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate)
Tommy Dinh of Tom's Marine & Salvage leaps from the giant crane he uses to pull boats out of the water on Wednesday, November 17, 2021. He has helped pull about 15 fishing boats out of the waterways around Lafitte so far since Hurricane ida. (Photo by Chris Granger | The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate)
Shrimp boots in Lafitte as salvage operations take place on Wednesday, November 17, 2021. Many boats in the area sank during Hurricane Ida. (Photo by Chris Granger | The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate)
A crane on a barge recovers boats that were pushed on land after Hurricane Ida at Tidewater Dock in Lafitte, La. Monday, Nov. 22, 2021. (Photo by Max Becherer, NOLA.com, The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate)
John Albrecht, 58, top left, stands on the rigging of his skimmer boat on Wednesday, November 17, 2021 as he watches Tommy Dinh, center, of Tom's Marine & Salvage run ropes around it as they prepare to pull it out of the water to salvage it ever since it sunk during Hurricane ida. (Photo by Chris Granger | The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate)
A maze of net rigging where fishing boats were pilled on each other near Lafitte on Wednesday, November 17, 2021. Tommy Dinh, right, of Tom's Marine & Salvage gets help from Charlie Brown as they try to salvage the boats months after Hurricane Ida. (Photo by Chris Granger | The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate)
Fisherman Rolland Phillips watches as boats are lifted out of the water near Lafitte on Wednesday, November 17, 2021. Many boats in the area sank during Hurricane Ida. (Photo by Chris Granger | The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate)
Tommy Dinh of Tom's Marine & Salvage leaps from the giant crane he uses to pull boats out of the water on Wednesday, November 17, 2021. He has helped pull about 15 fishing boats out of the waterways around Lafitte so far since Hurricane ida. (Photo by Chris Granger | The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate)
Shrimp boots in Lafitte as salvage operations take place on Wednesday, November 17, 2021. Many boats in the area sank during Hurricane Ida. (Photo by Chris Granger | The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate)
A crane on a barge recovers boats that were pushed on land after Hurricane Ida at Tidewater Dock in Lafitte, La. Monday, Nov. 22, 2021. (Photo by Max Becherer, NOLA.com, The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate)
When Hurricane Ida blew through lower Jefferson Parish in late August, it brought wind, rain and surge. What it left behind was mud — lots and lots of mud.
In addition to debris from wrecked boats and homes, the canals in and around Jean Lafitte — particularly lower Barataria and Lafitte — are clogged with mud and marsh grass, making them impassable to many of the crabbers, shrimpers and fishermen who rely on them to put food on their table and fuel the local seafood industry.
Almost three months after the hurricane, even the boats that survived unscathed are often trapped in slips that now have as little as a foot of water.
Larry Helmer, 70, who’s been fishing local waters his whole life, can’t get either of his boats out from where they’re docked at his home on Anthony Lane in Barataria.
The one he’d use for winter crabbing needs 3 or 4 feet of water, and even his boat with an outboard motor, which he could trim up to the surface of the water, would have trouble making it through. And even if it could get out he'd have to worry about getting stranded as the tide goes out.
“If I can’t get out on my boat, I can’t go fish, and at my age, I can’t go on no job hunt,” he said, chuckling ruefully.
Helmer's son, who lives two canals away, is in the same position.
“He can’t even go to work. His boat is just about on bottom,” Helmer said. “It’s terrible, man — it’s just terrible. The mud from this hurricane just filled these canals in.”
Jean Lafitte Mayor Tim Kerner Jr. said that while the ring levee protecting the town was overtopped by water from Ida's surge, it managed to keep a lot — but not all — of the mud from getting through. The areas outside of the levee to the south were not as fortunate, and the formerly green front lawns along Jean Lafitte Boulevard south of the town are now sun-baked slabs of cracked mud.
Kerner, who is also head of the Lafitte Independent Levee District, which has been working with the parish and state and federal partners, first on dewatering the damaged drainage system south of the town and now on dealing with the mud, said the canals need to be dredged. When that will happen and which agency will do it is still unclear, though Kerner said that's not for lack of effort by the governor's office and related agencies, which he said have been responsive to the region's plight.
“We’ll be digging out of that mud for months to come,” Kerner said. “Nothing has ever put that much mud on us.”
On a recent Wednesday morning at Jean Lafitte Harbor in lower Lafitte, a half-dozen men watched as a crane lifted the tangled aluminum boom of a shrimp trawler from the murky water in Slip No. 31. Underneath it was a partially sunken skiff belonging to John Albrecht, of Chalmette, who watched with several others. Despite the boat's sorry condition, he's hoping it's still repairable.
Steven Crawford wasn't so lucky. The 57-year-old former tugboat pilot had been hoping the 35-foot shrimp boat he just had built would get him to retirement. But three days earlier, he watched it get pulled out of the water, just like Albrecht's.
"Destroyed it before I even used it,” he said, estimating the setback will delay his retirement about a year. "It was horrible. The whole boat was underneath the water and (another) boat sunk on top of mine."
Nicholas Dinet, who's lived in the area for 21 years, lost four businesses to Ida — his restaurant, marina, ice house and charter service were all wiped out. He bought a food trailer to serve food near where his Boutte's Bayou Restaurant was, but he said the income from that is basically keeping his three remaining employees paid. The restaurant was insured; the other businesses were not. Dinet, his wife and two children have been getting by on her salary as a hospital employee, though they got money for a month's home mortgage payment from the Louisiana Charter Boat Association.
"I’ve never went through this," he said. "This is mentally exhausting. You don’t know the right way to go and you can’t ask nobody 'cause nobody knows the right way to go. We're all learning together."
The parish's economic development agency, JEDCO, recently hosted a meeting to help connect residents and business owners affected by the storm to state and federal aid providers, including FEMA and the U.S. Small Business Administration. Executive Director Jerry Bologna said the agency recently started a $1 million loan program to help commercial fishermen in Jefferson repair their vessels, invest in new equipment and modernize their businesses.
There are also some modest mutual aid efforts at the grassroots level, Bologna noted.
One of those was started by fisherman Ronald “Jug” Dufrene, whose losses in the storm were limited to a bit of gear. He decided to set up a GoFundMe campaign called the Lafitte Barataria Fisherman's Fund to raise money for impacted commercial fishermen, though it has only raised $3,345 as of Wednesday.
"I was probably one of the most fortunate ones in Lafitte, the way I look at it," Dufrene said. "I want it to go to our fishermen. I’m not going to take a nickel of it. This is for the fishermen who lost their boats, who can’t go to work.”
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Email Chad Calder at ccalder@theadvocate.com.
Twice in the last year, barges moored at a Lafitte boat salvage yard have broken free during hurricanes and smashed into the Leo Kerner swing …
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