The $5.8 billion Hyundai Steel plant that's set to rise in Ascension Parish is a key project for Gov. Jeff Landry's administration. And to make it work, Hyundai and state officials have long known they would need a new port facility to bring raw materials in and send finished goods out to the Korean automaker's assembly plants.

The answer to that logistics problem came last month, when the Port of South Louisiana was tapped to build and operate a new $25.5 million deepwater dock. The project, however, is on land controlled by the Port of Baton Rouge, which in years past may have raised thorny questions of control and oversight that could've turned into a political brawl.

But under the newly established Louisiana Ports and Waterways Investment Commission, which has been tasked with direct

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