Weekly News Summary For March 12-18, 2007:
The general manager of the Huntsville Madison County Marina and Port Authority in Huntsville, Ala. is pushing for a new river terminal, south of the Huntsville International Airport, that would transfer gasoline, jet fuel, ethanol and bio-diesel via barge.
Ed Mitchell, general manager of the Huntsville Madison County Marina and Port Authority, has been working on the project as a transportation consultant for 35 years.
“We have been trying to get petroleum products into North Alabama and South Central Tennessee for over 40 years. It’s been determined that we won’t get them by pipeline. It’s too costly,” Mitchell said. “I’ve resorted to the fact that barge transportation would be feasible, and it is.”
According to Richard Tucker, executive director of the Huntsville-Madison County Port Authority, historically, the city has had two separate projects underway, one for a pipeline and one for a river port….
Continued expansion of commerce along the Red River in Northwest Louisiana was highlighted as the waterway’s five ports gave presentations at the Red River Valley Association (RRVA) annual convention February 21–23 in Shreveport, La.
The five public ports—Port of Caddo-Bossier (Shreveport), Red River Parish Port, Natchitoches Parish Port, Alexandria Regional Port and Avoyelles Parish Port—have handled 5.45 million tons of cargo since 2000.
In conjunction with the convention, the Red River Valley Navigation Committee met to discuss potential lock closures and the River Action Plan, which is being developed to determine “trigger points” for safety restrictions during high and low water.
The committee brings together representatives of the Corps of Engineers, Coast Guard, industry and state agencies, said Richard Brontoli, RRVA executive director.
Workers have been putting the finishing touches on the new $1.1 million vessel traffic control tower at Mile 99 on the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway (GIWW) near Berwick, La., at the Jesse Fontenot Memorial Boat Landing. Ribbon-cutting ceremonies are scheduled for March 14.
The 100-foot tower will provide redundancy for VTS Berwick Bay for the camera, AIS and radar systems with vantage points looking westward along the GIWW and southward along the Lower Atchafalaya River, said Lt. Cmdr. Richard Paciorka, chief of the waterways department.
The tower will be equipped with a state-of-the-art TERMA radar and a camera that has tilt/zoom/pan features. It ties in by two-way microwave transmission to the Ports and Waterways Safety System (PWSS) located at the Marine Safety Unit (MSU) in Morgan City.
An automatic sensor will kick in a propane-fueled generator if the underground power supply is interrupted, explained Howie Fields, the MSU’s civilian electrical materiel officer. A battery backup keeps it running until the generator is up to speed. Fields retired from the Coast Guard as a lieutenant in 2003.
Bill and Jim Manley are launching a new fleeting operation, Upper Mississippi Fleeting, in the Linwood, Buffalo, and Muscatine, Iowa, areas starting with the 2007 navigation season.
Upper Mississippi Fleeting is a partnership of Bill and Jim Manley, Walt Bassow and Carter Newt.
Newt Marine will provide three boats: Cleva Lee, Tigre, and the Nebraska City. Big Sky Marine, one of the Manley Brothers Companies, is providing the Christine Ann Marie, to be renamed the Jaime Lynn.
The Manley brothers and Bassow own the fleeting rights between Miles 471 and 476 and from Mile 450 to Mile 452.5.
“Owning the bottom of the river is an advantage, because it lowers our cost and doesn’t make us subject to the whims of a property owner or escalation in property values or lease rates,” Jim Manley said.
Capt. Walt Bassow, who started his river career as a deckhand for Williams Marine, will be the president and operations manager of Upper Mississippi Fleeting.
Moderating temperatures in mid-February reduced the amount of ice on the Missouri River. As a result of heavy snow on March 1 over part of the eastern Dakotas, Nebraska, and western Iowa, the Corps reduced releases from the system of upstream reservoirs.
Releases from Gavin’s Point Dam were cut to 9,000 cubic feet per second (cfs.) as the river ice melted. The blizzard that swept across the region during the last week of February brought a maximum of two feet of snow to eastern South Dakota. The snow, along with what fell in Nebraska and Iowa, allows the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to maintain low releases for a period of time.
Runoff for February was 112 percent of normal. For 2007, the revised forecast is 20.1 million acre-feet (maf.), 80 percent of normal. The mountain snow pack above Fort Peck is 85 percent of normal. In the reach between Fort Peck and Garrison, the Yellowstone River basin, it is 82 percent of normal.
Twenty-four hopper barges of 2000 vintage were loaded onto a semi-submersible barge in New Orleans earlier this month for a 34-day trip to Argentina. The barges are owned by SCF of St. Louis.
Bill Kinzeler II of Running Rivers supervised loading and Mike Hassett of Brymar Marine provided engineering and technical support. Kinzeler and Hassett were hired by SCF for the loading.
It was the first of two shipments. A second load for the semi-submersible, including 16 barges and two towboats, will be prepared when it returns from Argentina.
Port Side Maritime of Puerto San Martin in Argentina was overseer in New Orleans and will have the same duties during unloading. Jose Castillo and Stanley Geddes represented Port Side Maritime.
Hassett said the barges were collected at the France Road container dock in New Orleans East. The dock has seen little use since the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet (MR-GO) suffered shoaling during Katrina.
“It’s a perfect location for the loading process,” Hassett said of the out-of-the-way location.
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