Weekly News Summary for September 17-23, 2007:
River Services lost $240,000 in gross revenue due to the six-week closure of the Mississippi River following the collapse of the I-35 Bridge on August 1.
“We were out of work or without freight for six weeks,” said River Services General Manager Jerry Christensen.
“The big ticket item was that we were scheduled to do 30,000 tons of icing salt, which we hadn’t received, and once the collapse happened, we lost business, because they had to look for another destination, not knowing when the channel would be reopened,” he added.
The U.S. Coast Guard reopened the Mississippi River to limited commercial traffic from Mile 854 to 847 in Minneapolis September 6. A security zone limits traffic to commercial barges.
Christensen said some of his employees suffered due to being laid off but were hired back.
River Services received its first barge placement early September 8 after the river reopened. River Services had four barges waiting 2.5 weeks to be brought to them while the channel was closed.
“We’ve unloaded three of those, so we’re virtually caught up,” Christensen said….
It has been seven years since lawmakers passed a Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) to authorize infrastructure improvements on the nation’s waterways. Seven years is a long time, considering that the legislation has traditionally been passed on an every-two-years schedule, which theoretically gives every new Congress its say in waterway development.
This year, the inland towing industry and its representatives in Washington have been working hard to get the measure through both houses of Congress, then a conference committee, back to the Senate and House for final approval, and ultimately to the White House for the president’s signature.
So far, the bill has made it through four of those six steps: all that remain are Senate approval of the conference report, then the White House signature.
Should President Bush veto the bill, two more steps are added: votes in each house, again, to override the veto.
Waterway interests are represented by Washington-based associations—including the National Waterways Conference, Waterways Council Inc., the American Waterways Operators—and numerous regional organizations. The National Waterways Alliance (NWA), an umbrella organization of a number of the associations along with representatives of numerous industries that ship products on the waterways, has led the fight for WRDA….
American Commercial Lines Acquires Naval Architecture Firm
American Commercial Lines Inc., Jeffersonville, Ind., announced that it has signed an agreement to acquire the assets of Elliott Bay Design Group Ltd. (EBDG), a naval architecture and marine engineering firm headquartered in Seattle, Wash. EBDG also recently opened a second office in New Orleans, La.
The financial terms of the investment were not disclosed. The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of this year.
The new company, Elliott Bay Design Group LLC, will continue to provide naval architecture, marine engineering and production support to its many customers in the commercial marine industry, while providing ACL with capability supporting its transportation and Jeffboat shipyard businesses, ACL said in the announcement….
Consolidating the evaluation process for mariners’ documents and licenses in the foothills of West Virginia is creating even more hardships for seamen, said Capt. Ron Wahl, who operates Sea School in seven cities.
He said he knows of not one experienced evaluator from the 17 Regional Examination Centers (REC) who has accepted a permanent position at the National Maritime Center (NMC) being built in Martinsburg, W.Va., leaving the evaluation process to mostly inexperienced personnel.
Wahl said the NMC will miss the expertise of the industry-respected REC directors and evaluators such as Richard Wells in New Orleans and Wayne Conwell in Miami.
While the RECs will remain open to process applications and take fingerprints, temporarily, the Coast Guard’s plan to move all evaluators from the RECs to a central location effectively eliminates a mariner’s ability to speak face to face with the evaluator, he said.
He suggested that by taking away the responsibilities of RECs in 17 major port cities and retraining new people a long way from any seaport eliminates a mariner’s chance of face-to-face contact with the person in control of his future….
Two years ago, when storm surge from Hurricane Katrina flooded 80 percent of New Orleans, the Fire Department had no boats to rescue the thousands of trapped residents.
Pictures of the rescues in the aftermath of Katrina showed the firemen using shallow-draft boats, but those were either boats individual firemen brought to their firehouses for safekeeping during the storm, or boats “found or confiscated.”
An estimated 18,000 people were rescued from the floodwaters by the New Orleans Fire Department after Katrina, with the Coast Guard rescuing an additional 33,000.
The lack of boats has been addressed with a Homeland Security Grant, and donations from two other sources have now equipped the New Orleans Fire Department with a 28 boat “navy.”
“Firemen going out to rescue citizens in boats they were seeing for the first time and with no training is a recipe for disaster,” said Capt. Ruel Douvillier, who is one of the coordinators of training with the new boats….
On last week’s sixth anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attacks, the Coast Guard issued a reminder of its America’s Waterway Watch program.
The program, commonly referred to as AWW, is a concept similar to the neighborhood watch program.
“It’s like neighborhood watch on the water,” said Mary Larsen, chief of the America’s Waterway Watch division for the Auxiliary’s Marine Safety department.
With more than 95,000 miles of shoreline and more than 290,000 square miles of water, the Coast Guard Auxiliary—and its parent organization, the U.S. Coast Guard—can’t be everywhere at once. With AWW, they call on the eyes and ears of private citizens who frequent the waterways.
The main objective of America’s Waterway Watch program is to prevent acts of terrorism and other illegal activity by having members of the commercial and recreational boating industries, as well as the boating public, recognize and report suspicious activities that may be indicators of potential terrorism….
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.)
