Weekly News Summary For September 15 - 21, 2008:
“What most people don’t understand,” said Joel Dupre, president of Southern Recycling, “is that except for the levees holding, Gustav was worse than Katrina in some ways.”
Local and federal authorities in southern Louisiana got high marks this time around for their responses to Hurricane Gustav, and some barge companies managed to execute plans to move assets out of its way. There was little dramatic physical damage to large structures. But closures, delays and power outages are taking a toll on river businesses.
The Baton Rouge area took Gustav’s brunt. In a September 10 statement posted on its Web site, the city’s power utility, Dixie Electric Membership Corporation (DEMCO) said:
“Hurricane Gustav has proven to be the most disastrous storm to hit DEMCO’s system since we began providing service in 1938. With over 95,000 outages spread out over a seven-parish area to contend with, DEMCO crews began working safely and diligently around the clock with the hopes of restoring power as quickly as possible. Everyone’s hard work and support has helped to reduce DEMCO’s outages to 7,670 or about 8 percent as of 12 p.m. today.”…
The Corps of Engineers announced last week that it will cut back support for commercial navigation on the Missouri River above Kansas City, Mo., for the remainder of this year.
“There is no commercial navigation scheduled in September or October in the reach from Kansas City to Sioux City (Iowa),” said Larry Cieslik, chief of the Corps’ water management office in Omaha, Neb. “Therefore, only downstream water-supply requirements will be provided above Kansas City. Flow support for navigation from Kansas City to the mouth near St. Louis, Mo., will continue,” he said.
Because water levels in the six large reservoirs upstream from Sioux City remain lower than normal, the Corps is providing only minimum service flows for navigation and other downstream uses. The commercial navigation season will be shortened by 30 days. The last day of navigation flow support at Kansas City will be October 27, and October 31 at the mouth of the river near St. Louis. Normally, the last day of the navigation season at the mouth would be November 30.
Releases from Gavins Point Dam in Yankton, S.D.—the last dam on the system—will be reduced by 3,000 cubic feet per second (cfs.) per day beginning on October 20. Releases will be reduced to about the 9,000 cfs. level, depending on what is needed to allow downstream water intakes to remain operational….
After overcoming a last environmental challenge, the St. Paul City Council issued an approval to proceed with plans to move a barge-cleaning facility, Upper River Services LLC, from one property to another. The final decision was made in an August 27 meeting of the council. But the move may not be completed until 2011.
Some city residents had objected to the plan to move Upper River Services from Barge Terminal #2 on the west side near the Lafayette Bridge to a slip near the St. Paul airport. Three citizens filed a complaint, arguing that the new location had been improperly filled with dredged material and that the move would prevent wetlands restoration on the property.
The move was part of the city’s comprehensive plan for the riverfront, which includes plans to increase green space. A port authority announcement said the old property had been built in the 1950s and did not have proper stormwater drainage, only a “patchwork of grandfathered systems.”
Hokan Miller, an employee of Upper River Services who said he did not speak for the company, had vocally opposed the move, telling the Minneapolis-St.Paul StarTribune that the new location is “operationally inferior.” He claimed the move would increase the distance between the dock and barge parking areas, and would actually “diminish” the river system’s capacity….
The levees held for Hurricane Gustav. That was good news for New Orleans, but the news was not so good for Southern Recycling and its subsidiary, Southern Scrap. About 70 vessels it moored in the Inner Harbor Navigation Canal, also known as the Industrial Canal, near its Florida Avenue scrapyard, tore loose and careened around the canal during the storm. In the absence of levee breaks, the loose ships were the most dramatic incident of the hurricane. Photos and videos of Southern Scrap’s vessels became the signature image of Gustav on some blogs and Web outlets.
One loose barge knocked into the wall of the port’s container parking lot, causing visible cracks. The canal walls are not federal flood-protection walls or part of the federal levee system, but are another layer of protection inside U.S. Army Corps of Engineers flood walls.
Three vessels crashed into a warehouse. And several piled up against the fenders of the Almonaster railroad bridge. Southern Scrap’s president Joel Dupre said the bridge itself didn’t sustain any damage, although its fenders did. Damage to the rail lines over the bridge came from the Lake Pontchartrain surge that scoured the rail bed, he said, and had nothing to do with the vessels.
Now Southern Scrap has been ordered to clear the canal of its remaining vessels ahead of Hurricane Ike, or sink them.…
George Foster’s floating office is covered with photos of his fly-fishing trips, many of them with barge industry colleagues. These trips have taken him to Montana, Idaho, the coast of Chile and many other places around the world. He modestly admits to tying the occasional fly himself, although his familiarity with several premier fly-tiers in the Yellowstone area shows that he studies the art closely.
His modesty extends to his long career in the river industry as founder of JB Marine Service Inc. located at Mississippi River Mile 168 on the Missouri side, but owning property on both sides of the river. Since 1976, Foster has been an industry leader and innovator, not to mention a prominent civic patron.
Foster still calls himself a “small operator,” although his company employs more than 100 people including 10 office personnel and the rest welders, deckhands, barge cleaners and pilots. As the industry changed, JB Marine Service moved from fleeting into barge repair services and is now adding a fourth drydock, bought from Sneed Shipbuilding, to its other three, along with five floating cranes and eight tugs.
Foster christened the new drydock after his daughter Christina, who said she had “no idea” she was the namesake until it was unveiled.
“Our new dock will enable a quicker turnaround and get barges back into service faster,” said Foster.
“Two things have driven our success,” said Foster, “my employees and my customers.”
That focus on others links his roles as employer and civic patron to his service in many industry-related committees. Foster jokes that he served 11 years of what was supposed to be a one-year term as president of the St. Louis Harbor Association, a trade group of fleeting and barge service companies….
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