Weekly News Summary For February 16-22, 2009:
After appeals from the barge industry, an Illinois 7th Circuit judge issued a restraining order on February 3 suspending water discharge regulations that could have halted all commercial waterborne traffic on Illinois rivers beginning February 6.
The regulations ultimately stemmed from a 10-year-old lawsuit filed in California by environmentalist groups against the federal Environmental Protection Agency (see WJ December 15, January 19).
The suit argued that the EPA had wrongly excluded marine water discharges from the Clean Water Act in 1973. A federal judge in California’s 9th District ordered the EPA to craft new water discharges regulations under the CWA.
As part of the process, the EPA wrote to state environmental agencies in 2008, inviting them to add their own, stricter regulations if they wished, as environmental law allowed them to do.
The proposed Illinois rules regulating gray water—waste water generated by dishwashing, laundry, showering and other shipboard activities—were impossible to comply with in many cases, said Lynn Muench, senior vice president of The American Waterways Operators….
Missouri state officials met on February 4 with industry representatives and the Army Corps of Engineers to discuss how to increase commercial navigation on the lower Missouri River.
The meeting came in the midst of an unprecedented increase in state spending on Missouri’s 13 river ports.
The February 4 meeting in Kansas City, Mo., called “Bringing Traffic Back to the Missouri River,” had “record” attendance, with almost 100 participants, according to presenter Bob Goodwin of the Maritime Administration.
Attendees included officials from the Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT) and Missouri’s Department of Natural Resources, as well as industry representatives and officials from the Coast Guard and Army Corps of Engineers.
John LaRandeau of the Corps of Engineers said he was heartened to see more attendance than in past years….
Two former port captains of DRD Towing testified during a Coast Guard hearing in New Orleans that it was common practice for an apprentice mate to get higher pay to work unsupervised and one said an unlicensed deckhand was allowed to fill in for an apprentice mate. The hearing is to review the cause of the collision between the pushboat Mel Oliver and a ship last summer that created an oil spill, closing the Mississippi River for the better part of five days.
Former port captains Gary Daigle and Jim Sellers both testified they told owners of DRD Towing that if there was ever an incident, and the Coast Guard found out about the crewing practices, there would be trouble.
American Commercial Lines (ACL) owned the Mel Oliver and the barge DM 932, which was involved in the accident about 1:30 a.m. on July 21, spilling an estimated 280,000 gallons of heavy No. 6 oil in the Mississippi River just above the Crescent City Connection bridges in downtown New Orleans. DRD Towing crewed the Mel Oliver.
Without admitting any guilt, ACL assumed the enormous financial responsibility for the multi-million dollar cleanup, which at times had as many as 2,000 people working to clean vessels fouled by the spilled oil and lay boom to prevent additional fouling. Almost seven miles of boom was deployed during the cleanup…
The Coast Guard’s National Maritime Center said last week it is taking actions to reduce the amount of time it takes to process mariners’ license applications.
The NMC is based in Martinsburg, W.Va. When it opened a year ago, it consolidated the credentialing process that had previously been performed in 17 Regional Examination Centers throughout the nation.
The NMC receives mariners’ applications and conducts detailed evaluations to ensure the mariners meet applicable requirements for the credentials sought. All mariners are evaluated in three areas: professional qualifications, safety and security, and medical.
In an announcement February 12, the center said it has achieved “notable progress” in its first year, including: increasing the number of credentials issued by 135 percent; decreasing the average inventory age of applications by 49 percent; reducing cycle time to conduct professional qualification and safety and security evaluations; and achieving compliance with ISO 9001.
However, since late fall the processing time has gone up. Part of this is due to the complexity of the application, which often requires follow-up communication with the mariner. And 16 percent of the delays are the result of production bottlenecks in the medical evaluation stage of the process….
In an oxbow of the Red River at Boyce, La., Cleco, an electrical co-op serving Central Louisiana, is busy stockpiling petcoke in advance of the start-up of its new $1 billion dollar power plant. Delivering the product is the new towboat Christy T, christened by Terral RiverService January 22 at its fleet near Old River Lock at the mouth of the Red.
Built by NewSouth Marine Construction in Greenville, Miss., the 2,000 hp. Christy T. measures 92 by 30 by 10 feet. It is powered by two Caterpillar 3508 Tier II diesels from Thompson Power.
The Christy T, along with other Terral towboats, is dedicated to keeping the Cleco generating plant fully supplied, a task that is anticipated to require some two to two-and-a-half million tons of petcoke and limestone per year, or between 25 to 30 barge loads a week.
The logistics—from loading the petcoke at refineries in New Orleans and Baton Rouge to unloading it at the Cleco dock—are all being handled by Savage Services, Houston. Savage has a long-term charter with Terral to provide the boats and with Robert B. Miller & Associates to provide the barges. The company handles the on- and off-loading itself, with its own crews, said Rob Davidson, vice president of development.
At the Cleco dock, which can handle two barges at a time, there is a pedestal-mounted E-Crane with a 25-ton capacity….
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