Weekly News Summary For June 28 - July 4, 2010
The Asian Carp Regional Coordinating Committee (ACRCC) announced June 23 that a contract fisherman working for the group had caught a single 20-pound Bighead carp about six miles from Lake Michigan in Lake Calumet the day before. It is the first actual carp found above electric barriers designed to keep the aggressive fish out of Lake Michigan.
The 34-6-inch long, 19.6 pound fish was caught during regular samplings by commercial fishermen contracted to the Illinois Department of Natural Resources. The fish is only the second carp caught in the Chicago Area Water System. The first was caught December 3 of last year in the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal just above Lockport Lock and Dam, below the barriers.
“We set out on a fact-finding mission and we have found what we were looking for,” said John Rogner, assistant director of the Illinois DNR. “This is important evidence and the more information we have about where Asian carp are, the better chance we have of keeping them out of the Great Lakes.”
Previous fish kills and sampling have failed to locate any carp past the electric barriers, including a recent poisoning with rotenone that killed about 11,000 fish. The Corps of Engineers has resisted calls to permanently close locks between the Chicago-area waterways and Lake Michigan. The state of Michigan has lost two attempts to close the locks by court action that went to the Supreme Court. This week’s carp find renewed calls by Michigan’s attorney general Mike Cox to permanently separate the Chicago waterways system from the Great Lakes.
Col. Vincent Quarles, commander of the Chicago Engineer District, said, “the Army Corps of Engineers will continue to operate the locks and dams in the Chciago Area Waterways System for Congressionally authorized purposes of navigation, water diversion, and flood control. We will continue to support fish suppression activity by modifying existing structures such as locks as requested by other agencies to support this common goal. At this time there is no intention to close the locks.”…
Washington, D.C.—The Jones Act debate over whether foreign-flag vessels should be allowed waivers to join U.S.-flag ships in cleaning up the millions of gallons of oil spilled in the Gulf of Mexico after BP’s Deepwater Horizon exploded in April continues in Washington, D.C.
On Capitol Hill, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), ranking member of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, introduced a bill that would allow waivers for foreign-flag vessels assisting in responding to the oil spill.
Introduced June 18, the bill (S. 3512) would exempt foreign-flag ships from Jones Act restrictions if engaged in “containment, remediation, or associated activities in the Gulf of Mexico in connection with the mobile offshore drilling unit Deepwater Horizon oil spill.”
Meanwhile, Incident Commander (Adm.) Thad Allen was reported saying that the administration has “not seen any need to waive the Jones Act” as part of the government’s response to the oil spill disaster in the Gulf.
The American Waterways Operators said in its June 18 “AWO Letter” that Allen was responding to “recent public misconceptions” about the availability of American vessels in the cleanup operation….
A federal judge blocked a blanket moratorium on deepwater oil drilling issued by the Obama administration, saving thousands of jobs along the Gulf Coast, at least for the time being.
The Obama administration said it will appeal.
U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman heard two hours of testimony on June 21 and ruled the next day that the Interior Department’s decision to issue the moratorium on drilling for petroleum in waters deeper than 500 feet was invalid and “simply cannot justify the immeasurable effect on the plaintiffs, the local economy, the Gulf region and the critical present day aspect of domestic energy availability in the country.”
Feldman’s ruling prohibits officials from enforcing the moratorium until a trial is held. He did not set a date.
In his 22-page decision, Feldman said the Obama administration’s moratorium was “arbitrary and capricious” and “does not seem to be fact-specific” and even labeled statements made to justify the moratorium as “factually inaccurate.”…
The maintenance needs of the aging inland waterway infrastructure continue to rise.
In 2009, the American Society of Civil Engineers gave the country’s overall infrastructure a D grade and the inland waterways a D-. The design life of the locks and dams was 50 years, and the average age of federally owned and operated locks is nearly 60 years; many on the Upper Mississippi River and Illinois Waterway are more than 70 years old. The continuous lack of adequate funding has led to the current condition of the locks and dams, but the Rock Island Engineer District is doing everything it can to improve the grade on the Upper Mississippi River and Illinois Waterway within the district.
The Rock Island District maintains 20 locks and dams on the Upper Mississippi River and Illinois Waterway, covering 582 river miles from Dubuque, Iowa to Hannibal, Mo., and from Chicago to Versailles, Ill. The locks, built in the 1930s in support of the nine-foot navigation channel, allow for the safe and efficient transport of a wide variety of commodities. Each year, more than 90 million tons of cargo and more than 100,000 boats and barges pass through the locks on both the Mississippi and Illinois rivers.
Over the years, repairs to the infrastructure of the inland navigation system have been numerous, but the operation and maintenance backlog has continued to grow. Although there have been several major rehabilitations done to the locks and dams, the miter gates at the 600-foot locks are still original.
In 2009, the district’s engineers were tasked with creating a design to replace six of the miter gates on the Upper Mississippi River, the first step in replacing all 39 vertically-framed miter gates in the district….
Riverman and river historian Capt. Charles Henry Stone, 95, died June 19 in Point Pleasant, W.Va.
A third-generation riverman, Stone was born at Lock 11 on the Kanawha River, where his maternal grandfather was lockmaster. His paternal grandfather owned and ran the Kanawha River Ferry from the 1870s. His father, Capt. C.C. Stone, continued the ferry business, and Charles Stone worked for his dad until the ferry was replaced by a bridge in 1931.
By that time, the family business—Stone’s Harbor & Towing Company—was involved in towing a variety of cargoes on the rivers. The company was headquartered in Henderson, Ky., across the Kanawha River from the family home in Point Pleasant.
C.C. and Charles Stone operated Stone’s Harbor & Towing Company—with a total of nine boats—until 1967, when the company was sold to Capt. Robert Bosworth. Charles Stone remained active in the business, working in the office with Bosworth….
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