Weekly News Summary For February 23–March 1, 2009:
Depending on funding and construction scenarios, tows in the Upper Mississippi River and Illinois Waterway could face delays at locks under expansion of up to 11 hours per tow, per lock, over the next decade or so. And longer funding and construction cycles could mean longer delays for tows during construction.
That was the sober message at the first meeting of a new navigation coordination committee in St. Louis. The meeting took place at a meeting of the Upper Mississippi River Basin Association in St. Louis on February 17.
The group includes representatives from the Army Corps of Engineers and the towing industry and its main customers. It moved at the session’s end to organize itself with a charter, a name (to be determined) and regular meetings, possibly quarterly. The second meeting was tentatively scheduled for August, but with a commitment to confer via phone conference before then.
The group is forming because of an upcoming period of years—possibly even decades—of repairs and upgrades to five locks on the Upper Mississippi River and two on the Illinois River.
Locks 20, 21, 22, 24, and 25 on the Upper Mississippi River will be expanded to 1,200 feet, as well as LaGrange and Peoria locks on the Illinois Waterway. The improvements fall under the aegis of the Navigation & Ecosystem Sustainability Program (NESP), under Title VIII of the Water Resources Development Act of 2007…
“Maintaining Focus in a Constrained Economy” will be the theme of the 2009 Inland Waterways Navigational Conference, to be held at the Nashville Airport Marriot March 3-5.
The annual conference brings together the leaders of the Corps of Engineers, Coast Guard and inland barge industry for several days of panel presentations, information-sharing and networking. Among the featured speakers will be Merritt Lane, president of Canal Barge Company and chairman of The American Waterways Operators; William Ensch, chief of operations for the Corps of Engineers; Adm. Joel Whitehead, commander of the Eighth Coast Guard District; and Cornell Martin, new president of Waterways Council Inc. Capt. David Stalfort, commanding officer of the Coast Cuard’s National Maritime Center, will discuss licensing issues.
The program also includes the “Captains’ Panel,” featuring a number of experienced towboat captains discussing some of the issues they face in the wheelhouse. Other topics on the preliminary agenda include the Coast Guard’s “Operation Big Tow,” training opportunities, river stage forecasting, discharge permits, and a host of other industry issues. Evening activities are also scheduled….
President Obama’s stimulus bill, signed into law February 17 and officially called the American Recovery and Reinvestmant Act, contains money for inland waterways interests in addition to the $4.6 billion for the Army Corps of Engineers.
It also includes a ramp-up to $100 million for the Maritime Administration’s Small Shipyards Program. Last year, the program distributed $9.8 million to small shipyards across the country, including nine “brown-water” yards serving the inland waterways (WJ, May 19, 2008).
Last year’s grants were the first time MarAd directly funded shipyards (a previous program subsidized construction differentials for individual ships).
A MarAd spokesperson said no shipyards have yet applied for this year’s round of grants. According to the terms of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, all federal agencies dispensing money under the bill must submit a spending plan to the White House….
When Joe Nichols formed Nichols Boat Company in 2007, it was a new company, but not exactly a new departure. “My dad has been in the boat-building business for 43 years,” said Mark Nichols. Nichols Propeller has been repairing propellers and other towboat and barge equipment for more than 30 years in Greenville, Miss.
Mark’s uncle, D. John Nichols, is chief executive officer of Mississippi Marine Corporation, also in Greenville. Nichols Boat performs final assembly at Mississippi Marine.
And boat-building isn’t new to Nichols Propeller. “In the early 80s, operating as Marine Services Corporation, we built three harbor boats and one large drydock,” Nichols said. Two of the boats were built from the keel up and one was a rebuilt hull with new superstructure. When the building boom suddenly collapsed, “We fell back on propeller work and metal fabrication. Nichols Propeller became our main company and primary focus.”
In 1987, Mark Nichols left Greenville to earn an A.A.S. degree in electronics in Arkansas. Then he spent 6 1/2 years in Austin, Texas, working in the computer industry.
“When I got sick of that, I came back, and my dad put me to work. I figured I got out of that business just in time.” It was 1996, a few years before the first tech bubble burst, so he figures his timing was just right….
Capt. Noble L. Gordon, 95, of Clearwater, Fla., who founded and led a number of important river companies, including Mid-South Towing Company and Gulf Coast Transit Company, died February 13.
Born in 1913 in Paducah, Ky., Gordon started his river career in the early 1920s as a wiper on the old oil tanker W.H. Libby. From there, he worked his way up, and got his first master’s job aboard the sternwheel towboat S.S. Wood River, owned by Ingram Oil.
He worked from 1939 to 1944 as master/pilot on Upper Mississippi Towing Corporation vessels, then went back to Ingram in 1944 as vessel master and later went shoreside as operational assistant to Capt. Nelson Broadfoot, the executive vice president.
In 1953, he left Ingram to head up the creation of a new barge line, Potter Towing Company, a division of Nashville Coal Company. In 1959, he began Mid-South Towing and Gulf Coast Transit Company, divisions of Tampa Electric Company, and four years later, Electric Coal Transfer Company, also a division of Tampa Electric. Gulf Coast Transit was one of the originators of the tug-barge concept of cross-Gulf dry-bulk transportation….
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