I will never forget my trip to Cameron just one week after Hurricane Rita wiped out everything but a water tower and the court house. I mean there was nothing left standing. What wasn't destroyed was strewn about so randomly. One of the first things I saw was a big redwood picnic table in a tree. the folks of Cameron had nothing to be glad about, yet everyone I talked to was only talking about the future and how they would rebuild and, by damn, they did it. Now let's flash forward to the present.

Peterson Offshore Group, an international energy logistics management company signed a letter of intent to lease over 1 million square feet in Port Cameron's Logistics Center. What is being planned is a 500-acre port to be built over the next four years. The added jobs from this one project will create something in the neighborhood of 4,000 jobs. Let me put that another way: this project will double the employment in that parish!

For Ted Falgout, executive director of Port Cameron, Cameron Parish is the perfect location for this project.

"I think seeing these raw assets that exist [in Cameron Parish], proximity to Houston, depth of the Calcasieu Ship Channel, the great inland waterway connections of this region - how these assets can be put together to create efficiencies we have not experienced before."

It's projected that, during the first five years that the project will generate about $450 million in taxes. That is, of course, great news. Couple that with the fact that this little job will also provide something along the lines of 8,000 construction jobs! Construction is expected to begin near the end of this year.

 

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