Weekly News Summary for August 6-12, 2007:
Washington, D.C.—Acting quickly on a conference committee report accompanying an authorization bill that President Bush immediately threatened to veto if passed by Congress, the House put its stamp of approval on the Water Resources Development Act of 2007 (WRDA) late August 1, only two days before the start of a scheduled August recess. The Senate was not expected to take up the report until September.
The same day that the House passed the bill by a vote of 381 to 40, Rep. James Oberstar (D-Minn.), chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, was warned of the administration’s opposition by the Office of Management and Budget and the Department of the Army.
In a letter to Oberstar, John Paul Woodley Jr., Assistant Secretary of the Army (Civil Works), and Rob Portman, director of OMB, said that “because the conference version of H.R. 1495 significantly exceeds the cost of either the House or Senate bill and contains other unacceptable provisions, the president will veto the bill.”
“The administration has urged the Congress to limit the total cost of the authorizations in this WRDA and to authorize only those projects that would provide a high net return on investment and fall within the three main Corps mission areas,” Woodley and Portman said. “Unfortunately, the conference has reported a bill that exceeds significantly the $15 billion estimated cost of the House-passed bill, which is the higher cost of the House and Senate bills. Indeed, it seems a $14 billion Senate bill went into a conference with the House’s $15 billion bill and somehow a bill emerged costing approximately $20 billion. This is not how most Americans would expect their representatives in Washington to reach agreement, especially when it is their tax dollars that are being spent.”…
“America’s inland waterways transportation system won’t continue to be the ‘world class’ system it is today unless we continue to take care of it in terms of maintaining it and even more by modernizing it for the future,” said Waterways Council, Inc. Vice President John Doyle during his July 25th remarks to the Waterways Industries Association of Paducah. “That’s the task that all of the members of WCI have taken on,” he told the luncheon audience at Whaler’s Catch.
Doyle, who serves as vice president for government relations for WCI, is special counsel for the law firm, Jones Walker, and has worked on water resource, transportation, environment and public works issues for almost thirty years in Washington, D.C. He has also had senior executive assignments in the Department of the Army along with senior staff positions for leading committees in the U.S. House of Representatives.
A seasoned Capitol Hill and Washington Beltway veteran, Doyle has worked under the previous administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush as Acting Assistant Secretary of the Army (Civil Works) and as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army (Civil Works). In these capacities, he was twice awarded the Outstanding Civilian Service Medal for personally directing the Corps of Engineers effort to implement the Water Resources Development Acts of 1986 and 1988 and for leading the Corps-wide effort to support the Environmental Protection Agency’s Superfund program.
Doyle has also served as the chief of staff for the House Committee on Public Works and Transportation (now the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee) and, prior to that, as the committee’s Minority Counsel for Water.
“You can’t have anyone representing the waterways interests that is more knowledgeable and enthusiastic about the inland waterways system than John Doyle,” said fellow WCI board member Steve Little, president and chief executive officer, Crounse Corporation, during his introductory remarks. “We’re lucky to have him on our team,” Little added….
The Coast Guard responded to the Interstate 35 bridge collapse August 1 in Minneapolis, Minn. to help local fire and police departments, emergency medical services and the state emergency operations center with search and rescue operations.
A 25-foot smallboat crew from the Marine Safety Detachment from St. Paul, Minn., was on the scene. An HH-65C Rescue Helicopter crew from Coast Guard Air Station, Traverse City, Mich., along with the Coast Guard Auxiliary were deployed to the scene to conduct search and rescue operations.
Due to the bridge collapse, the Mississippi River was closed from Mile 848 to 857. Coast Guard spokeswoman Lt. j.g. Anastacia Visneski said it’s hard to guess when the river will reopen, because the search for cars in the water is ongoing. The debris and current complicate matters further.
She said no vessels were waiting to transit the area as of Thursday.
The Corps of Engineers, St. Paul District, was also involved in the efforts. The Lower St. Anthony Falls Lock and Dam at Mile 853.4 is immediately above the collapsed bridge and was being used as a staging point for search and recovery missions, according to a Corps official. Additionally, Shannon Bauer, public affairs, said that as soon as the initial rescue operation is over, the Corps will release water from Locks 1, and lower the pool between one and two feet to aid search and recovery workers. The Corps has one crane on the north side of Lower St. Anthony Falls Lock and Dam. At the time of this writing, it is unknown what other equipment will be brought in to assist….
On July 16, American Commercial Lines christened the William L. Klunk and dedicated a new 48,000-square-foot building in Lemont, Ill., along the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal.
Before, both the boat and the former facility were in disrepair, said Norb Whitlock, executive vice president-governmental affairs. The difference is staggering. Previously operating out of a trailer, now ACL has a much larger and more modern facility with approximately 10,000 square feet of office space. The extra space can accommodate the firm’s growing staff, which currently includes Ron Novak, facility manager; Max Cedano, terminal manager; Chuck Colognesi, fleet manager; Gabriel Forir, sales director; Matt Bridges, assistant facility manager; and Randy Rogers, barge maintenance.
The rest of the building is a large climate-controlled warehouse, filled with steel coils at the time of the christening. It can be used to store weather-sensitive cargo, such as paper, said Whitlock. Outside of the building, ACL owns 35 additional acres that can be used to accommodate customers with outdoor storage needs, said Forir. Novak commented that he sees a lot of potential for containers and project cargoes at the new Chicago area property.
The Boat
The mv. William L. Klunk is hardly recognizable. In fact, it would appear that the only two things actually left from the old boat are the hull and a DeHart Swingmeter.
The 90- by 32.1-foot retractable-pilothouse towboat was built in 1966 by Jeffboat Inc., an American Commercial Lines company. The refurbishment work was completed at National Maintenance & Repair Inc. of Hartford, Ill….
Barge operators are seeing reduced profits and increased costs as low water conditions prevail along the Cumberland, Tennessee and lower Ohio Rivers. The annual low water summer conditions along the lower Ohio are being exacerbated by reduced flows from the Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers.
The lower Ohio basin experienced a five-inch deficit in rainfall during July and similar conditions are being observed along parts of the Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers as well. Kellie Hammond from the Tennessee Valley Authority’s navigation branch told a recent industry management group that the Cumberland and Tennessee River basins were suffering from a 12.5-inch seasonal rainfall deficiency with area runoff totaling 57 percent below average.
Conditions may not improve any time soon, according to Jeff Ross, chief of the navigation branch, Army Corps of Engineers, Nashville. Lake elevations in two large upper Cumberland River reservoirs have been lowered to record levels to accommodate structural repairs to halt seepage around their bases. Because of the reduced amount of water into the river, flows have been restricted, and channels along the lower portion of the system are experiencing little current and shallow depths. “This is the first time that we on the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers don’t have the reserves we’ve had in the past,” Ross noted. There is a concern among Corps officials that barges may be carrying even lighter loads in coming months, he added.
The Corps and TVA began their annual reservoir draw-downs in early July although Cumberland and Tennessee River operators have suggested that the procedure be halted or delayed until drought conditions improve. A rainfall shortage and reduced flows have twice resulted in the closure of the public beaches on Kentucky Lake, immediately above Kentucky Lock because of high concentrations of E. coli. Previously, the beaches were closed from June 30 through July 4 for the same reason, the Paducah Sun reported….
The Waterways Journal encourages letters to the editor.
Have something on your mind?
Send letters to: jshoulberg@waterwaysjournal.net.
(Please indicate whether or not your letter is intended for publication.)
