Weekly News Summary For August 27 - September 2, 2007:
The navigation channel that has been closed since the August 1 collapse of the I-35 Bridge in Minneapolis may reopen in about two weeks, officials said.
Dick Lambert, director of ports and waterways for the Minnesota Department of Transportation, said the National Transportation Safety Board is directing how the demolition contractor, Carl Bolander & Sons Company, will remove the bridge.
During an August 23 meeting with the Coast Guard and Corps of Engineers, Bolander & Sons estimated the project would last about two weeks.
“(NTSB’s) purpose is in finding what caused the bridge to fail,” Lambert said. “They have to be careful that they don’t destroy evidence.”
“If Bolander were allowed to get rid of it as normal, they could do it faster than that, but they have to be careful. It’s like a jigsaw puzzle, and they have to determine the cause,” he said.
Since the bridge collapse was near the upper end of the navigable part of the river, most barge traffic was not affected. Several docks and terminals, however, are located above the site, and have been shut down since the bridge fell….
Unlike many longtime rivermen who followed their fathers and other family members into the towing business, Bill Stile started loading coal at a landing in Pittsburgh simply because he needed a job. He was 18, just out of high school with no prospects for college, and ready to earn his own way. Other than living near the river, he had no particular attachment to it.
Little did he know that his shoveling would lead to a 45-year career with Campbell Transportation Company, which celebrated the renaming of the mv. Bill Stile in his honor July 27.
The 120-foot vessel was built in 1958 by St. Louis Shipbuilding as the S.M. Jenks, with a stainless-steel hull and a second-deck pilothouse for transiting low bridges during high water. It was powered by a pair of Fairbanks-Morse 38D8-1/2M diesels capable of generating a total of 1,280 hp.
Stile is now senior port engineer for Campbell Transportation and general manager of its Dunlevy, Pa., shipyard on the Monongahela River. Campbell Transportation Company Inc. and its subsidiary C & C Marine Maintenance Company are both wholly owned by Blue Danube Incorporated….
The Coast Guard’s National Maritime Center has announced a new procedure designed to reduce delays in processing applications for mariners’ licenses. Under the new process, only applications that are considered “ready for evaluation” will be forwarded to the center from the Regional Exam Centers (RECs).
“As you know, the Mariner Licensing and Documentation program is facing tough challenges,” wrote Capt. David C. Stalfort, NMC commanding officer, in the announcement. “Mariners are complaining about lengthy delays in receiving their credentials, about poor customer service, and about inconsistencies regarding policy. One of the main reasons mariners are experiencing delays is the fact that the RECs and the NMC spend a large amount of time obtaining information missing from the mariner’s credential application submission.
“Centralization brings huge opportunities to set a new focus, set new goals to improve service to the merchant mariners—our customers—and to improve the processes used to produce merchant mariner credentials. We must take advantage of these opportunities to reduce application processing time and improve customer service.”…
American Commercial Lines, Jeffersonville, Ind., announced that it has opened its new Liquid Transportation Division headquarters in Houston, Texas.
The opening of the new regional headquarters, combined with ACL’s recent announcement to build 30 new 30,000-barrel tank barges in 2008, begins the foundation for the Company’s long-term strategy to increase liquid business from 24 percent to 40 percent of its total transportation revenue.
“The opening of our Liquid Transportation division in Houston has generated a tremendous amount of positive feedback from our liquid customer base,” said Michael P. Ryan, senior vice president-sales and marketing….
Inland marine industry leaders and representatives from throughout the United States gathered at Paducah, Ky., August 21 for a surprise reception honoring the Rev. Jean Smith, who is retiring as Seamen’s Church Institute executive director. The event was staged in the Founders’ Room of the River Heritage Museum, adjacent to SCI’s Paducah training center, and was hosted by the museum and the training center staff. Smith was lured to town to participate in the institute’s annual Center for Maritime Education golf tournament on August 22.
A graduate of the Church Divinity School of the Pacific, near San Francisco, Smith joined the Seamen’s Church Institute as director of the International Seafarer Center at its New York headquarters in 1990. In 1998, she established the Ministry on the River program, which has become the nation’s only mobile response team, providing pastoral care and personal assistance to river and coastal mariners along virtually the entire inland waterways system. The program utilizes three chaplains and a cadre of more than 100 churches of various denominations in towns all along the rivers.
Smith became executive director in 2002 and is retiring on September 30. She will be succeeded by the Rev. David Rider….
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