Weekly News Summary For February 18-24, 2008:
Waterways Council Inc. (WCI) and the National Waterways Conference (NWC) were both critical of the Army Corps of Engineers’ civil works budget proposed by the administration for fiscal year 2009.
“This FY 2009 budget sends a confusing signal about the administration’s understanding of our nation’s critically important inland waterways system,” said R. Barry Palmer, president and chief executive officer of WCI. “It funds at optimum levels only seven high-priority projects, while it provides only partial funding for three important projects whose construction schedules will slip and whose costs will continue to escalate.
“The 80-year-old Inner Harbor Navigation Canal project (in New Orleans), first authorized for replacement in 1957 and then successively at different times in the 1980s and 1990s, again would receive no funding. Three critical major rehabilitation projects on the Upper Mississippi River—Locks and Dams 3, 19 and 24—were also cut from this budget.”
The budget request proposes FY ’09 spending of $309.6 million for Inland Waterways Trust Fund-financed projects, with $167 million coming from the dedicated Trust Fund, paid for by commercial users of the waterways. The remainder would come from general treasury funds, as required under current law….
TEPPCO Partners L.P., Houston Texas, has purchased the assets of Cenac Towing Inc. and Cenac Offshore LLC, Houma, La. The purchase includes 42 pushboats, 89 barges and related commercial agreements. The deal is worth approximately $500 million, including about $320 million in cash and 4.85 million newly issued limited partner units, TEPPCO said in an announcement.
TEPPCO funded the cash portion of the consideration and retired the assumed debt from borrowings under its $1 billion credit facility.
“This acquisition, while creating an entirely new business segment for TEPPCO, is a natural extension of our existing assets and complements two of our core franchise businesses: the transportation and storage of refined products and the gathering, transportation and storage of crude oil,” said Jerry E. Thompson, president and chief executive officer of TEPPCO. “Barge transportation services for refined products and crude oil continue to be in high demand, and our acquisition of these attractive assets from one of the premier operators in the industry, builds on our integrated value chain strategy and broadens the scope of logistics services we are able to provide our customers.”…
Brig. Gen. Robert Crear will transfer command of the Mississippi Valley Engineer Division to Brig. Gen. Michael J. Walsh in a change-of-command ceremony February 20 in Vicksburg, Miss.
The ceremony will be officiated by the Corps’ chief of engineers, Lt. Gen. Robert Van Antwerp, and will take place at 10 a.m. in the Vicksburg Convention Center.
Crear, Mississippi Valley Division commander and president of the Mississippi River Commission since June 2004, will be retiring after more than 32 years of service with the U.S. Army.
Brig. Gen. Walsh comes to Vicksburg from Baghdad, Iraq, where he was division engineer of the Corps’ Gulf Region Division. He has held a variety of other command and staff positions in the United States and overseas, including division engineer of the Corps’ Southwestern Division, Dallas, Texas, chief of staff at Corps headquarters from May 2003 to June 2004 and the Corps’ executive director of civil works from August 2001 to May 2003. In addition, Gen. Walsh’s career includes two Corps district commands: Sacramento District from 1998 to 2001 and San Francisco District from 1994 to 1996….
Mike Tagert, a lobbyist and director of the Mississippi Bureau of Plant Industry, has been named administrator of the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway Development Authority.
Tagert, who lives in Starkville, Miss., began work in the Tenn-Tom office in Columbus, Miss., on February 1.
“I look forward to meeting and working with the people of the 54-county four state corridor area served by the authority,” he said.
Before serving as director of the state’s Bureau of Plant Industry, he worked as a special projects officer and lobbyist for the Mississippi Department of Agriculture and Commerce in Jackson and in Starkville. Tagert served in the U.S. Marine Corps and Marine Corps Reserve….
“We’ve competed with the railroad our whole lives, and we’re going to have to compete with them right now,” Rick Griffith told a crowd that had gathered in Ashland, Ky., January 26 to witness the christening of the new towboat J. A. Ward. Just as the president of McGinnis Inc. began his remarks, a CSX railroad train blasted a warning signal behind him as it rumbled down the track at the foot of Winchester Avenue. Friends, family and McGinnis employees huddled under a canvas windshield erected on a deck barge as occasional snow flakes blew around the new 2,100 hp. towboat waiting to be officially welcomed into the fleet of Excell Marine Corporation.
“When you do this in January, what can you expect?” he laughed, thanking the audience for braving the harsh weather not normally associated with a boat christening.
Griffith told attendees the new towboat is the first one that McGinnis has delivered since 1981 and it is the first boat the South Point, Ohio, firm has christened since 1986. “The market was down for a while and we quit building boats,” he said. “We’ve built about 25 or 30 boats, and we were proud to start on this one,” he added.
Bruce McGinnis, chief executive officer of McNational Inc., gave a brief synopsis of the family-owned marine business, which incorporates vessel construction and repair along with a thriving fleeting and harbor service operation and line boat towing services….
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