Capsule News Summary For April 25—May 1, 2005:
Those in the river industry have heard about the current reorganization of the Coast Guard to form sectors, but without any changes along the inland waterways. Many people have been wondering when the changes are to take place.
Lt. Comm. Jeff Carter, spokesman, Coast Guard headquarters, said those changes are already underway, with sectors formed in Boston, Baltimore, Key West, Miami, San Juan, San Diego, Guam and Honolulu. Due in 2005 are Long Island Sound, New York, Delaware Bay, North Carolina, Mobile, Los Angeles/Long Beach, Detroit, Sioux Sainte Marie, Buffalo and Lake Michigan.
The majority of the sectors to be formed on the inland waterways will take place during the summers of 2006 and 2007. The sector formations have, for the most part, been scheduled to coincide with changes of command, said Carter.
As part of the formation of a sector, marine safety offices as well as divisional commands will be combined into a single sector….
Ingram Barge Company’s acquisition of seven linehaul towboats, 430 covered hopper barges and the St. Louis barge fleeting and repair facility, all belonging to Riverway Company of Minneapolis, is nearly complete. The closings on the sales of various pieces of equipment are being transacted in phases, the first of which was April 1. Now over 80 percent complete, the deal is expected to be totally consummated in early May.
Included are three 9,000 hp. towboats, the mvs. Gale C, Harriet Ann and Henry B; one 8,400 hp towboat, the Steve T; and three 4,300 hp. towboats, the Evey T, Hornet and Mary L. Workers are said to be in the process of removing the Riverway markings from the vessels as they are being put into service by Ingram.
Riverway’s eighth linehaul towboat, the Bootsie B, an 8,000 hp. vessel built by Bollinger Shipyards in 2001, will continue under the ownership of Riverway, along with about 50 barges. Thus, the almost 70-year-old company will maintain its presence in the barge and towing arena, and Terry Becker, Riverway president, will carry on his advocacy of the river industry, he said….
The Nashville Engineer District will be busy in upcoming weeks and months with revised procedures and several scheduled lock outages.
Old Hickory Lock, Cumberland River Mile 216.2, will now close at 6 a.m. June 1 and is scheduled to reopen for normal passage of traffic on June 17. The scheduled maintenance closure previously announced was changed. There is no auxiliary chamber at Old Hickory Lock.
Nickajack Lock, Tennessee River Mile 424.7, will close at 6 a.m. on June 6 to allow for extensive maintenance to be performed on the electrical controls and components to the lock. The lock is expected to reopen for normal passage of traffic on June 12. Navigation traffic may experience temporary delays in the days leading up to the closure. These temporary delays are not expected to last more than a few hours. There is no auxiliary chamber at Nickajack Lock.
Pickwick Auxiliary Lock, Tennessee River Mile 206.7, has been closed so the district can perform maintenance to the armor plate in the upper approach walls. Work is expected to take about four weeks to complete….
Waterways Council Inc. (WCI) has named Mark Knoy, president of AEP Memco LLC, Chesterfield, Mo., as its next chairman of the board.
Knoy succeeds Berdon Lawrence, chairman of Kirby Corporation Houston, Texas, as WCI’s chairman. Lawrence served Waterways Council Inc. since its inception in 2003, and before that, as chairman of predecessor organization Waterways Work!
“I look forward to working with WCI as we continue to educate those on Capitol Hill, in the news media and the general public about the critical need to maintain and modernize our nation’s ports and inland waterways infrastructure,” Knoy said. “WCI will continue to be the leading, unifying voice for this message.”…
Skyline Steel LLC of Parsippany, NJ, has announced that it will locate a steel processing facility near Yellow Creek Port at the juncture of the Tennessee River and Tenn-Tom Waterway. The facility is expected to initially employ 30 workers with 60 percent being highly skilled metal trades positions. The company will invest approximately $17 million in the facility to produce steel rolled structural pipe used primarily in heavy construction such as buildings, bridges and wharves.
Skyline is planning to break ground later this month and expects the plant to be in operation sometime during the first quarter of 2006. The firm anticipates shipping about one barge load of steel per month.
According to Eugene Bishop, executive director of the Yellow Creek Port Authority, Skyline needed a location that would allow it to move oversize cargo by water in order to be competitive….
Poor snow accumulation in the mountains and very little rain on the plains continue throughout most of the upper Missouri River basin, providing no relief to reservoir and river water users from the current drought.
“Runoff into Oahe reservoir in March was only 21 percent of normal,” said Brig. Gen. William Grisoli, Northwestern Division Engineer. “As of April 1, the mountain snowpack was 69 percent of normal in the reach above Fort Peck, and 74 percent of normal in the reach from Fort Peck to Garrison.” Generally, the mountain snowpack peaks around mid-April.
With below normal mountain snow and normal rainfall the rest of the year, the forecasted annual runoff is 16.7 million acre-feet (maf.), about 66 percent of normal. “It’s likely that the low mountain snowpack along with dry soil conditions due to persistent drought will absorb a good deal of the runoff before it reaches the reservoirs,” said Grisoli. Normal runoff is 25.2 maf….
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