One of our goals at Restoration and Resilience is to offer a better analysis of green jobs potential than past jobs multipliers have provided. To do this we’ll examine case studies of completed and proposed wetland restoration projects. Today we’ll start a series of posts that lay out some estimates of the job creation that could be generated by restoration of the Central Wetlands Unit. Bear in mind that we rely on assumptions and estimates throughout our analysis, and we encourage you at the outset to send us feedback on our methods.
View of the New Orleans CBD from the Central Wetlands Unit (Source: Tierra Resources LLC)
From the vantage point of the skyscrapers along Poydras Street or the top of the 40 Arpent Levee in the Lower Ninth Ward, one can see a flooded area just south of the recently-closed Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (MRGO) Canal that serves as a cemetery of dead trees and submerged hopes. The Central Wetlands Unit (CWU) is a 30,000-acre expanse of degraded marsh straddling Orleans and St. Bernard Parishes. Once a verdant area of cypress forest, the CWU served as a lush habitat for birds, fish, and other wildlife right next to New Orleans. After the construction of MRGO in the mid-1960s, saltwater intrusion from the Gulf of Mexico raised salinity levels in the basin, killing wetland plants, accelerating land loss, and destroying an ecosystem. Within a decade, this thriving recreation area had been transformed into an unproductive expanse of water, punctuated by ghostly cypress trunks.
Now, five years after Hurricane Katrina and under renewed focus as part of the MRGO restoration, the Central Wetlands Unit will be revitalized with support from the federal government and state agencies. Renewal of the CWU will generate employment directly in construction, dredging, planting, and other restoration work. The revitalization effort will ripple throughout adjacent neighborhoods, creating spillover economic activity in the Lower Ninth Ward, Chalmette, and other communities near the wetland. In the long term, the restored area will provide steady job opportunities in ecosystem management, recreation, and tourism for residents of Louisiana's largest metropolitan area.
The question is, just how many jobs will be created?
In Part I, we look at direct employment from dredging and site preparation in the CWU, estimating that the direct jobs payroll would be approximately $1.34 million, with the equivalent of 55 full-time positions created for dredging crew material movers and managers.
Why is the Central Wetlands Unit Important?
Map of the Central Wetlands Unit within the New Orleans Metropolitan Area (Source: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, New Orleans District)
Besides serving as a local habitat for wetland fauna, a restored Central Wetlands Unit could provide valuable services for the New Orleans metropolitan area. Though it is encircled by levees, the CWU could function as a flood and storm surge “sponge” on the region's eastern reaches, taking pressure off of century-old pumping systems and other manmade defenses.
Plans are already underway to convert the Central Wetlands Unit into a natural system for water treatment. Treated wastewater from the East Bank Sewage Treatment Plant in Orleans Parish and the Munster Facility in St. Bernard Parish will be pumped into the basin, where grasses and trees would then use dissolved residual nutrients as fertilizer. In addition, a reforested CWU could serve as a sink for greenhouse gases, providing natural carbon sequestration at the doorstep of one of the Gulf Coast's largest cities.
Recreation and education are other activities that will benefit from restoration of the Central Wetlands Unit. Surrounding schools have already expressed interest in integrating outdoor learning into local science curriculums, and commercial enterprises are already drawing up plans to transform the area into a living laboratory and incubation center for a new generation of restoration-focused entrepreneurs.
What Will Restoration Require?
Detailed Map of the Central Wetlands Unit, showing areas labeled A1 – A4 (Source: Office of Environmental Affairs, City of New Orleans)
Returning the Central Wetlands Unit to its previous state will provide several years of work. Fortunately, the area is included in the MRGO restoration area, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is allocating financial resources for its revitalization. In addition, Phase I engineering and design work has provided templates for possible regeneration plans in the zone. Aside from Coastal Impact Assistance Program (CIAP) funding, future restoration work could draw support from the sale of carbon credits and corporate sponsors in the energy and transportation sectors.
The Central Wetlands Unit restoration could be broken down into four stages:
- Preparation of the basin (dredging, filling) for restoration,
- Provisioning of treated, nutrient-rich wastewater from local treatment plants,
- Planting of trees and marsh grass, and
- Protection of the restored acreage through operations and management post-completion.
Over the next few posts on the CWU, we'll apply our jobs framework to estimate the jobs that will be created by this project. To start, let's look at employment from site preparation.
Estimating the Direct Jobs from Dredging and Filling in the Central Wetlands Unit
Within the Central Wetlands Unit, ground elevations vary from several feet below to several feet above sea level. In one possible scenario, low-lying areas would be filled in, allowing them to sustain cypress and other freshwater species. Fill could come from one of three sources: the Mississippi River bed (primarily sand), the bottom of Lake Pontchartrain (primarily mud), or the bed of Lake Borgne (though this mud may be too saline).
Source: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, New Orleans District
The amount needed will depend on the goals of the final restoration plan. Planting on already elevated areas, like those near the Riverbend Oxidation Pond in St. Bernard Parish, require less fill (about one million cubic yards). On the other hand, pumping in sand and mud to raise elevations in deeper areas throughout the basin (including the flooded Bayou Bienvenue “Triangle” near the Lower Ninth Ward) could require as much as twenty million cubic yards of material. For our example, let’s examine a moderately low-fill strategy requiring five million cubic yards of material.
To estimate labor costs, let’s assume that the work is carried out by three dredging crews working in shifts around the clock. Each work crew would require thirteen people (three managers and ten material movers) working each eight-hour shift. This gives us a combined dredging team of thirty-nine people, consisting of thirty-one material moving crew members and eight operation managers. Based on wage data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), we estimate that the median hourly wage for dredge operation managers in Louisiana is $18.01, while the median hourly wage for material moving crew members is $10.60.
Engineering firms involved in wetland and coastal restoration in Louisiana told us that the basin could be filled at a pace of 100,000 cubic yards per week for mud and 50,000 cubic yards per week for sand, which is denser than lake mud. Assuming that we decide to use only lake bottom material for filling the Central Wetlands Unit, we estimate that the five million cubic yard project would be completed in 5,000,000 / 100,000 = 50 weeks.
Fifty weeks of 13-person crews (on average) working twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week yields 50 weeks * 7 days per week * 24 hours per day * 13 work-hours per hour = 109,200 work-hours.
Using the BLS median wages, we find that the cumulative dredging/filling payroll would be (84,000 material moving crew work-hours * $10.60 per crew work-hour) + (25,200 manager work-hours * $18.01 per manager work-hour) = $1,344,252, as shown in the chart at right. The aggregate dredging crew work hours are equal to roughly fifty-five job-years, when we translate these work hours into full-time equivalent (FTE) units for employees working eight hours a day, five days a week, fifty weeks per year.
Aside from fill, additional materials required would include a dredging boat, piping materials, and other safety and construction equipment. The job would need monitoring and legal assistance to ensure compliance with labor and environmental standards. These are some of the indirect jobs that site preparation in the Central Wetlands Unit would create in Orleans and St. Bernard Parishes. In our next post on the Central Wetlands, we will lay out some estimates of the indirect and induced employment stemming from this phase of the CWU restoration.