Heavy equipment and a barge are parked along Bayou Des Allemands this summer, driving dock piles and grading a future parking lot for a boat launch that has been years in the making. St. Charles Parish President Matthew Jewell and Chevron's Danielle Brocato recently toured the site together, marking visible progress on a project first set in motion by a land donation nearly five years ago.
The 110-acre site off U.S. Highway 90 and WPA Road was donated to St. Charles Parish by Chevron in 2021, according to St. Charles Parish on Facebook. Talks between parish leaders and Chevron over the property actually began back in 2018, and the St. Charles Parish Council unanimously accepted the 109.8-acre gift from Chevron's Gulf of Mexico Business Unit that April, per the St. Charles Herald Guide. Chevron, which has operated in Louisiana since 1911, has also previously donated land for local schools and playgrounds in the parish, the outlet notes.
From Land Gift to Groundbreaking
Getting from donation to dirt work took far longer than anyone likely hoped. The project experienced years of delays due to emergency recovery operations following Hurricane Ida in 2021, and construction also had to wait on an access road built under the Lafourche Basin Levee District's Sunset Levee Lift Project in 2023, the Herald Guide reported. Combining that access road work with the levee project served as a mutual cost-saving measure for the agencies involved, per the same outlet.
The wait ended in October 2025, when the parish council approved a $4,989,859 construction contract with Cycle Construction Company, LLC, selected as the low bidder following a public solicitation period, the Herald Guide reported. Officials formally broke ground on January 6, 2026, kicking off an estimated 12-month construction phase, with parish leadership and Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority officials on hand for the ceremony, according to a St. Charles Parish announcement.
What Anglers Will Get
Phase one of the design calls for two launch bays extending 60 feet into the bayou, more than 100 parking spaces, 200 feet of dock space, two fish-cleaning pavilions, bench-swing pavilions, and on-site restrooms, per the parish. The project was designed by Duplantis Design Group, and the parish expanded its engineering services contract with the firm to $1,004,796 in September 2025 to cover additional construction administration and inspection work, according to parish council records.
More than $1.8 million of the funding comes from Natural Resource Damage Assessment and RESTORE Act grants, money tied to federal fines and settlements stemming from the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the parish said. Those funds are administered through the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority and the U.S. Department of the Treasury.
Why This Stretch of Bayou Matters
Des Allemands earned its nickname the hard way: Louisiana Governor Edwin Edwards designated it the Catfish Capital of the World in 1975, and the state legislature made it official five years later, naming the community the Catfish Capital of the Universe. Bayou Des Allemands links the 12,000-acre Lac des Allemands to Lake Salvador and the wider Barataria Basin, a connection that makes public launch access especially valuable for recreational and tournament anglers chasing blue, channel, and flathead catfish in the shallow cypress swamp lake, per Wikipedia.
By June, crews had mobilized the barge and heavy equipment seen on site to drive dock piles, grade and gravel the future parking lot, and tie rebar for concrete foundations, St. Charles Parish reported on Facebook. The parish previously detailed the contract approval in an earlier Hoodline report, and the boat launch has also come up in parish council discussions over CPRA agreements tied to the project. With work now underway on multiple fronts of the site, the parish's roughly 12-month construction estimate from January would put substantial completion within reach by early 2027.
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