Weekly News Summary For March 5-11, 2007:
Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) told a field hearing of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in New Orleans that the committee plans to complete writing the 2007 Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) by the end of March.
The long-overdue act includes hundreds of navigation, levee, and wetlands projects. Normally passed every two years, the last WRDA bill was approved in 2000.
At the urging of Louisiana Sens. Mary Landrieu (D) and David Vitter (R), the first field hearing of the committee since the Democrats took control of Congress met in New Orleans, following a helicopter tour of the area levee reconstruction and vanishing coastline.
Visits to the site of the 17th Street Canal breach, which flooded much of the western side of New Orleans, and a viewing of the IMAX movie “Hurricane on the Bayou” were included in the informational tour.
Sen. Vitter is a member of the committee and frequent critic of the Army Corps of Engineers. He had harsh questions for Environmental Protection Agency Regional Administrator Richard Greene about the agency’s decision to issue a permit to reopen the Old Gentilly Landfill in New Orleans East, because of environmental concerns about disposing storm debris on top of a clay cap that separates it from the garbage that was there previously….
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is faced with improving three almost-worn-out locks and dam structures on the upper Ohio River.
The Emsworth, Dashields, and Montgomery locks and dams, which were built in the 1920s and 1930s, are nearing the end of their useful life. In addition, the efforts the Corps made to rehabilitate the facilities during the 1980s and 1990s are nearing the end of their life expectancy.
“We have exhausted the value of previously performed rehabilitations that extend the useful life of these facilities,” said Curt Meeder, chief of planning for the Pittsburgh district.
“We have a concern that there’s a risk of structural or operational failure in the future. That’s what’s driving the time-frame for the study,” said Kevin Logan, the project manager.
The Corps is in the initial stages of a three-year study to improve the facilities, Logan explained.
The feasibility study is scheduled for completion in the fall of 2010. In October, the Corps conducted environmental scoping meetings to introduce the project and get feedback. The feasibility scoping meeting is planned for June. At that meeting, the Corps will present the problems, possible alternatives, and a framework and stage a more detailed analysis of the problems to look at during the study, Logan said….
The women who work on the river are a sisterhood of sorts. They share the same drive to prove themselves, the same drive to get things done, and they also share a love for all things along the waterways.
It took Joy Manthey 16 years to get a job on a towboat. During that time, when she applied for jobs, she faced men who said they didn’t have a cook’s job. When she showed them her license, they would tell her she was overqualified.
“It was difficult in the beginning. I got my first license in the 1970s, and I remember going down the river on my first trip. I remember people saying stuff about being home barefoot and pregnant,” Manthey, 50, said. “Guys would say things to me, and I kept quiet. I learned other guys would stick up for me. It was great to have guys come to my rescue.” Since the late 1990s, she hasn’t faced any opposition.
Manthey, who now lives in Baton Rouge, La., started bussing tables, cleaning ashtrays, and making popcorn at age 10 on the steamer President. In fifth grade she said she wanted to be a riverboat pilot. The teacher told her she couldn’t be a pilot, she would have to be a teacher or nurse. When she was 10 years old, the captain let her steer the Mark Twain. She received her master of passenger vessels license in the 1970s….
Lower Ohio River traffic was suspended for more than 12 hours February 28 between Mile 938 and 940 when a loaded benzene barge began leaking its cargo into the river after it was stranded atop a submerged lock wall at Lock 52.
Coast Guard Marine Safety Office personnel closed the river to all commercial traffic after it was discovered that the barge was losing product into the river about 12 hours after it the struck the wall while northbound in tow of the Kimberly Jane. The accident occurred around 7:30 p.m. February 27.
When it was determined that approximately 8,000 gallons of Cumene had escaped from the starboard lead cargo compartment of the barge, Coast Guard officials closed the river and local emergency responders called in HazMat teams to monitor the air in several locations in the vicinity of the lock at Ohio River Mile 938.9. Traffic on the Interstate 24 Bridge at Mile 940.8 was also interrupted for several hours as inspectors checked air quality.
Ironically, hundreds of local, state and federal hazardous responders were nearby, practicing for just such an incident. Capt. Denise Matthews, Captain of the Port, Paducah, told a local TV reporter, “We’re real fortunate we had some outstanding local state and federal agencies on the scene for an exercise.”…
Steel shipments helped the Ports of Indiana set a new record of $1.89 billion of cargo handled in 2006, the state ports authority reported last week. This was a 23 percent increase from 2005, which had been the previous 36-year high.
Steel accounted for $955 million of the 2006 shipments, a 45 percent increase from the previous year. The Ports of Indiana surpassed $1 billion in cargo shipments for the third consecutive year—the only three years this has been accomplished since the state’s first public port opened in 1970.
All three of Indiana’s ports on Lake Michigan and the Ohio River set individual records for total cargo value in 2006. Mount Vernon had $482 million, up 20 percent; Jeffersonville handled $588 million, up 30 percent; and Burns Harbor/Portage reported $820 million, a 21 percent increase.
Last year, Indiana’s three ports shipped 8.6 million tons of cargo, which was a 12 percent increase from 2005 and more than every other year since 1994. Top cargoes by volume were grain, coal, steel, fertilizer, limestone, salt, asphalt, coke, cement, minerals and asphalt oil….
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