Weekly News Summary For September 1 - 7, 2008:
The Corps of Engineers will not build a hurricane protection gate that is unsafe for navigation, said Maj. Jeremy Chapman, manager of the Corps’ project to construct a hurricane protection gate on the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway (GIWW) just east of the intersection with the recently deauthorized Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet (MR-GO) in Eastern New Orleans.
Chapman was responding to two rounds of questions from navigation interests at the 103rd Annual Conference of the Gulf Intracoastal Canal Association (GICA) regarding the proposed $800 million design-build project.
In an effort to fast-track construction of a storm surge protection levee and flood gate at the junction of the GIWW and MR-GO, and provide “advanced measures” protection, the Corps awarded the design-build contract to the Shaw Group of Baton Rouge.
After the contract was awarded, the first public meeting was held with stakeholders. Raymond Butler, executive director of GICA, and others who were among more than 500 stakeholders attending the first public meeting, questioned the safety of a hurricane gate with a design opening width of only 150 feet for navigation.
During subsequent discussions, navigation stakeholders said the Corps would not hear discussions about the gate opening width, saying the 150-foot width was specified in the design-build contract with Shaw Group. The Corps said the authorized GIWW channel in that reach was 150 feet and that dictated the channel opening….
Four bus loads of conference attendees toured the Inner Harbor Navigation Canal (IHNC) Lock during the 103rd Annual Conference of the Gulf Intracoastal Canal Association (GICA) which was held at the Westin Hotel in New Orleans on August 20–22.
The conference attracted the largest number of attendees ever and also had the highest participation by industry sponsors and exhibitors, said Raymond Butler, GICA executive director.
Corps employees were just completing the dewatering of the IHNC Lock for a planned 60-day rehabilitation outage as buses arrived. The lock will soon be the only route east from the Lower Mississippi River, once the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (MR-GO) is blocked with a rock dike.
The Corps delayed construction of the rock dike until after the planned IHNC repairs were made.
During the tour, lockmaster Richard McKinzie, along with Vic Landry, Michelle Daigle, and Chris Accardo, explained the strategic value of the lock and that parts of the old structure have to be cannibalized to keep it in operation. Many parts are no longer made. Holes from rusting were clearly visible in the gate near the lockmaster office.
“We’ll put a patch on that,” McKinzie said. “We put band-aides on top of band-aides.”
Requests for money to replace the original gates, control arms and machinery did not get funded by Congress. The lock was put in operation in 1923 and tonnage locked through is the seventh highest of any lock in the nation….
A 40-by-50-foot fuel tank that floated out into the Mississippi River channel during a flash flood near Cape Girardeau, Mo., has caused the Coast Guard to issue navigation warnings near the obstruction, although it did not cause the channel’s closure.
Heavy rains on the night of August 22—possibly as much as four inches—washed the tank from its moorings on the banks of a Missouri creek just off the Mississippi, where it was waiting to be cut up into scrap.
The tank’s owner, Robert Erlbacher of Missouri Dry Dock & Repair Company of Cape Girardeau, told The Waterways Journal the tank was lodged in the eastern edge of the shipping channel just opposite the Red Star River Access, at Mile 52.5, but did not completely obstruct the channel.
The Coast Guard’s Marine Safety Unit in Paducah, Ky. has broadcast warnings and posted lights and buoys around the obstruction. A Coast Guard spokesman in Paducah said tows were asked not to pass each other in the area. He said he did not know of any backup of tows.
On August 27, a salvage team from Okie Moore Diving & Salvage Company of St. Charles, Mo., was getting ready to make a lift. However, reports later that afternoon said a cable snapped during the lift attempt….
The latest in the long line of towboat christenings by Florida Marine Transporters was marked as much by the namesake who wasn’t there as by the ones who were.
The Mandeville, La.-based barge line held the bottle-breaking ceremony for four new boats August 7 at Brady’s Landing in Houston, Texas, after having to move the date back one day because of Tropical Storm Edouard.
Built by Eastern Shipbuilding Group, the new builds are named the mvs. R.D. Quebodeaux, Corey Quebodeaux, Cindy Hull and Stephanie Kennelly.
FMT owner Dennis Pasentine wanted to name a boat in honor of his company’s manager of boat maintenance, R.D. Quebodeaux. When Pasentine told him about it, Quebodeaux asked if he would name the boat after his son, Corey, who had died several years earlier in a rodeo accident. Pasentine agreed wholeheartedly, and in a gesture that others at FMT say is typical of the company founder, then named a boat after R.D. as well…
A major study by one of the world’s largest analysts of economic data dramatically confirmed the importance of the inland waterways to the nation’s economy.
For the study, whose data were released on August 5, the econometric modeling firm Global Insight modeled a 90-day closure of barge traffic through the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers during the period of October through December 2005.
The study was funded by the National Corn Growers Association, the Illinois Chamber of Commerce and others. The Farm & Agricultural Policy Research Institute, a think tank based at the University of Missouri, Columbia, were also involved in the work, Global Insight’s principal Scott Sigman told The Waterways Journal.
The study’s authors calculated the costs of shifting barge traffic to truck or rail during the study period of October–December 2005. The total cost of barging the grain, coal, minerals, waste materials, and petroleum products was estimated at $188.6 million. To ship the same cargo by alternative modes would have cost $482.8 million by rail, or a staggering $1.50 billion by truck—almost a ten-fold increase….
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