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| The Gulf Gateway Terminal at the Port of New Orleans. Waldemar S. Nelson & Co. won a Project Excellence Award from ASCE's Coasts, Oceans, Ports & Rivers Institute for their work on the project. (Photo Courtesy of Charles Nelson.) |
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| Charles Nelson (center) with his Project Excellence Award from ASCE's Coasts, Oceans, Ports & Rivers Institute. He's flanked by COPRI President Jane McKee Smith and William Hanson, a member of the COPRI governing board. (Photo Courtesy of Charles Nelson.) |
The engineering firm run by alumni Charles Nelson, B.S. 1970, and Ken Nelson, B.S. 1977, received a highly competitive Project Excellence Award Sept. 6 from the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE).
The small-project award from ASCE’s Coasts, Oceans, Ports & Rivers Institute recognizes Waldemar S. Nelson & Co.’s work on the Gulf Gateway Terminal in New Orleans, describing it as “an extremely fast-tracked project, driven by the need to increase delivery of domestically produced crude oil from multiple producing fields.”
The Nelson brothers are principals in the company: Charles is chairman and Ken is president.
The Gulf Gateway Terminal site is a former bulk terminal and rail ferry at the Port of New Orleans. The goal was to create an efficient and environmentally sound hub to move 70,000 barrels of oil per day from rail cars to river- or ocean-going barges.
“The entire Gulf Gateway Terminal project is an adaptive re-use of valuable, flood-protected waterfront real estate,” according to the COPRI award announcement. It makes use of 150-year-old rail infrastructure, and at full capacity will move more than 4 million tons of additional cargo through the port, according to Charles Nelson.
He said a flood-protection system designed post-Hurricane Katrina shields the terminal, and the project overall improves the efficiency, longevity and operability of the region’s refineries.
Waldemar S. Nelson & Co. is an engineering, project management, environmental science, and architectural services company located in New Orleans founded by the Nelsons’ father and other partners in 1945. Charles Nelson also serves as a member of the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering’s External Advisory Board.