Weekly News Summary For September 24-30, 2007:
How do you control traffic on the busiest manmade waterway in the world?
Attendees at the SmartRivers 2007 Conference at Louisville last week got an inside look at that challenge, and many others, faced by waterway and port engineers in the United States and Europe.
The Kiel Canal, which connects the North Sea with the Baltic Sea, is only about 98 kilometers (61 miles) long, but it carries more traffic than the Suez Canal and the Panama Canal combined, said Michael Winkler, a research hydraulic engineer with the Corps’ Engineer Research and Development Center in Vicksburg, Miss. Winkler and Robert Pfister, president of Frequentis Defense Inc., discussed the canal’s intricate traffic control system for the SmartRivers conference.
Although the canal is only about 40 meters wide in some places, it had some 41,000 transits in 2006. The canal is popular because it allows vessels to avoid a 260-mile trip around Denmark. Not only is the canal route much faster, but it also avoids the sometimes-treacherous seas of the northern route.
The considerable traffic in the canal is managed through a series of base stations, which work with Automatic Identification System (AIS) data from each vessel.
“The Kiel Canal has one of the most dynamic uses of AIS to control traffic management on the inland waterways that I saw throughout Europe,” said Winkler, who recently toured a number of European waterway-transport facilities.
Every boat that enters the canal must have an AIS unit, he said….
A new facility for a long-term port tenant, recruitment of an operator for niche shipping from the port’s Inner Harbor, and better than 50 percent gains in container traffic highlighted the annual State of the Port report delivered by Gary LaGrange, Port of New Orleans president and chief executive officer, last week at the Plimsoll Club atop the World Trade Center of New Orleans.
One year ago, LaGrange placed the relocation of New Orleans Cold Storage (NOCS) to the Mississippi River as his top priority. In June, port officials secured $30.5 million in capital outlay money to renovate the Governor Nicholls Street Wharf to become the new home of NOCS.
“We searched for a location for this facility throughout the port and found Governor Nicholls was the economically feasible solution,” LaGrange said. “This is a site where a longstanding port tenant can grow its business for many years to come.”
NOCS found itself forced to look for a location on the Mississippi River after silting and the impending closure of the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet effectively cut off deep-draft access to its dockside cold-storage facility. In 2005, NOCS generated 718 direct and indirect jobs and had a $35 million economic impact on the local economy. NOCS officials hope to double its cargo at the new facility on the Mississippi River.
The recovery and growth of the port’s container traffic also topped the port’s agenda, and LaGrange pointed to strong current cargo figures and plans for expansion….
After it’s all said and done, St. Louis will have three more arches in the middle of the Mississippi River from the lower end of the Chain of Rocks Canal down to the Poplar Street Bridge.
The chevrons, as the U.S. Army Corps Engineers calls them, are being constructed of limestone to improve navigation, decrease dredging costs and provide a place for fish to hang out in the winter. The northern most chevron will be completed next week, said the Corps’ project manager, Leonard Hopkins.
“We have rocks the size of a Yugo or Volkswagon down to small rocks like a handful of dirt,” Hopkins said.
About 530,000 tons of limestone is being brought up on flat deck barges from a rock quarry north of Ste. Genevieve, Mo.
Patton-Tully Construction, Memphis, Tenn., is hauling the limestone up the river in six-barge tows, carrying 7,200 tons of rock per trip. The company uses the mv. Miss Jennie with Capt. Larry Blasingim, and the mv. Helen Tully with Capt. Tommy Sheppard….
The Missouri River Recovery Implementation Committee (MRRIC) is forming to advise the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service how to manage the river for endangered species, said Lynn Muench, senior vice president for American Waterways Operators and a member of MRRIC’s planning committee.
The goal is to make sure the economic benefits are taken into consideration in terms of navigation, flood control, water supply and any economic or environmental things important to Missouri and the lower basin.
“My goal is to represent the American Waterways Operators and make sure navigation on the Missouri River is not impacted negatively with those decisions,” Muench said.
The group has met five or six times since March.
Randy Asbury, who works for the Coalition to Protect the Missouri River and is on the drafting team for MRRIC, said the group is drafting a charter, which is the basis of group operations and would provide for membership, purpose and decision-making.
“One of the key changes that needs to occur is for stakeholders and agencies regardless of location to be willing to take into account how specific efforts of any kind would impact others,” Asbury said….
In response to requests from industry, the Coast Guard has published proposed changes in merchant mariner training and service time in the Federal Register.
Anyone wishing to comment must respond by December 7.
“These are items many people have been asking for, so please be sure to look at these and make your comments,” advised Richard E. Wells, chief of the Regional Examination Center in Mandeville, La.
The proposed regulation would remove the expiration date of the radar-observer endorsement from the merchant mariner’s license, allow for an apprentice mate of towing vessel to reduce sea-service time for mate (pilot) of towing vessels by completing additional approved training, and would provide an alternate path to mate (pilot) of towing vessels for master of steam or motor vessels not more than 200 gross register tons, the Federal Register said.
These changes are intended to eliminate confusion and clarify training and service requirements….
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