"Recovering from Katrina"-The Port of Houston's Business Boom
Friday, September 09, 2005SUSIE GHARIB: The clouds of Katrina may have a silver lining for the port of Houston. Traffic there has ramped up in recent days, as shippers look for ways to get their goods in and out of the country. As we continue our ongoing series "Recovering from Katrina," Washington bureau chief Darren Gersh looks at the port and the business boom it`s bringing to Houston.
DARREN GERSH, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT CORRESPONDENT: The cargo ship "Indotrans" was supposed to dock in the port of New Orleans. And New Orleans native Dave Morici might have been one of the workers unloading it there, had it not been for Katrina. Now Morici and the "Indotrans" are working out of the port of Houston.
DAVE MORICI, NEW ORLEANS LONGSHOREMAN: My attitude is I have a place to work right now, a place to stay, a place to keep on living right now. In New Orleans it will probably be a rough road right now, so I am going to wait until things are up and running good before I make a decision to go back home.
GERSH: That`s a key challenge in reopening the port of New Orleans. Its workforce is scattered here and across the southeast. In the meantime, shippers are bringing order to the chaos, offloading cargo originally bound for New Orleans in ports like Tampa and Houston. This ship was supposed to stop in New Orleans. Instead it diverted here to Houston and it`s now filling up with 27,000 tons of grain bound for Veracruz, Mexico. But millions of tons of grain usually flows down the Mississippi to the port of New Orleans, and it will be expensive to reroute.
JIM EDMONDS, CHAIRMAN, PORT OF HOUSTON AUTHORITY: This port, Galveston, Corpus, Beaumont, all have grain elevators and we`re about to approach the end of the harvest season here, there`s going to be some decisions that need to be made on how they get that across the country and out into the foreign marketplace.
GERSH: The supply chain disruptions stretch around the world. Coffee from Vietnam and South America is being held up. Houston does a big business importing bags of coffee, but for four or five generations, New Orleans has specialized in bulk coffee and warehouses here say they can only do so much.
TODD STEWART, GULF WINDS INTERNATIONAL: A lot of the coffee that has been displaced that`s coming in is actually bulk coffee, so unfortunately, we haven`t been able to lend a huge hand on the bulk side.
GERSH: In the long run, shipping traffic may be permanently rerouted, though economist Bill Gilmer says ports like Houston will have a hard time competing with the Mississippi River.
BILL GILMER, SR. ECONOMIST, FEDERAL RESERVE BANK OF DALLAS: If you are concerned about infrastructure in the New Orleans area, either because of the levees or its location that close to the Gulf, maybe you just move upstream.
GERSH: That`s one reason New Orleans natives like longshoreman Armond Rodriguez are eager to get their port up and running. He says the Houston union local is treating him well, but he has 15 years experience operating cranes back in New Orleans.
ARMOND RODRIGUEZ, NEW ORLEANS LONGSHOREMAN: I love being a longshoreman, I love doing my job. I just have a little bit more seniority there. I figure that`s where my future is.
GERSH: But if the work does not return home, Rodrguez says he may have to start over in Houston as the low man on the totem pole. Darren Gersh, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT, Houston.
