Weekly News Summary for June 18-24, 2007:
Move beyond the sound-bites and armchair theories to make the nation safer from disaster, engineers suggested in a press release on hurricane lessons learned, issued by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) on June 1.
The ASCE External Review Panel was established at the request of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) to “conduct real-time expert peer reviews of the USACE’s Interagency Performance Evaluation Taskforce (IPET).”
In the report, ASCE scientists announced their opinions about what went wrong with New Orleans levees, and why.
The levee failures have been subject to a number of studies, including reports issued by the University of California-Berkeley, funded in part by the National Science Foundation; and one by Louisiana State University.
The published IPET report included almost 7,000 pages.
“It’s so easy to react to armchair theories and colorful sound-bites,” said David Daniel, PhD, P.E., president of the University of Texas-Dallas and chair of the ASCE Hurricane Katrina External Review Panel.
“Few people have the time to sort through 7,000 pages of technical data,” Daniel continued. “Unfortunately, people sometimes end up making policy based on headlines, not science. In our report, we offer a rational basis from which the nation can move forward.”…
The owners of the cruise ship Delta Queen are pushing Congress to approve the exempt status the boat has operated under for the last 40 years.
The exempt status applies to the boat’s wooden superstructure. Congress passed a law in 1966 that passenger vessels with more than 49 passengers were required to not only have a steel hull, which the Delta Queen has, but also a steel superstructure.
The Delta Queen is the only vessel operating with an exemption to that law. The last exemption was granted in 1998 for 10 years. Past exemptions have ranged from as little as two to three years up to 10 years. The House of Representatives passed another 10-year extension in 2006, but the bill never made it to the Senate due to mid-term elections….
Worth Hager, who has been associated with the National Waterways Conference for 26 years, the last three as president, has resigned effective June 15.
“I wanted to convey to each of you that it truly has been a great honor and pleasure to have worked together to try to improve the plight of water resources in our nation by making sure that there are adequate funds and workable policies,” she wrote in a letter to NWC members announcing her resignation.
NWC Chairman Scott Robinson and secretary/counsel William Satterfield said the board is in the process of establishing a search committee to find the organization’s next president. There is a possibility that Hager will be retained in some sort of lobbying capacity, they said.
In her letter to members, Hager singled out several people who helped her during her tenure at NWC….
In 1886, New Orleans Cold Storage & Warehouse Company Ltd. first opened its doors to serve the Port of New Orleans and surrounding area. It began by manufacturing ice and selling it to rail lines, sailing vessels and steamboats calling on the Crescent City.
Since that time, the company has become known as NOCS and expanded its locations to Houston and Charleston, S.C. It has markets in the panhandle of Florida, Gulf Coast of Texas, the Australian-New Zealand market, China, Taiwan, Eastern Bloc countries and Russia.
Its warehouse and transportation operations have spread well past just temperature-sensitive foodstuffs to include structural steel, pipe, heavy industrial equipment and textiles, according to the NOCS website.
Business expanded, as breakbulk cargoes increased from 127,000 metric tons in 2000 to 229,000 metric tons in 2004. Its workforce expanded by 70 percent in those years to employ more than 300 warehouse and longshore workers….
An upswing in the amount of coffee consumed nationwide has port officials in New Orleans feeling excitement about the caffeine jolt.
“New Orleans understands the importance of the coffee industry being here,” said Gary LaGrange, port president and chief executive officer. “Expanded shipping services are now offering importers new opportunities at the Port of New Orleans. We want to thank our loyal customers who continue to make us a top-notch coffee port and at the same time reach out to new customers.”
Being predominantly a breakbulk cargo port, coffee beans were seen as the barometer of the success of the Port of New Orleans for years. That’s not the case anymore, as steel imports have taken the lead in cargo tonnage, but coffee is still seen as an important cargo.
Port figures say it has averaged more than 200,000 tons of coffee imports per year, ranking it second only to New York in coffee stock, the amount of coffee bags currently stored in warehouses….
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