Weekly News Summary For December 28, 2009 - January 3, 2010:
As expected, Michigan’s attorney general, Mike Cox, announced December 21 in Grand Rapids, Mich, that he has sued, before the U.S. Supreme Court, the state of Illinois, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago to force changes to prevent Asian carp from entering the Great Lakes. The Supreme Court has original jurisdiction in any lawsuit between states.
Cox is calling for closure of the O’Brien Lock and Dam and Chicago Controlling Works, as well as new barriers between the Des Plaines river and the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal to prevent carp entering the canal during flooding, which can mingle the waters of the two waterways. The Corps has already set aside money to build berms between the two waterways. Cox also wants the sluice gates at the Wilmette Pumping Station, the O’Brien Lock and Dam, and the Chicago Controlling Works operated in a manner that will prevent carp from passing into Lake Michigan.
Cox’s action was praised by Joel Brammeier, acting president of the Alliance for the Great Lakes in Chicago, according to the Detroit Free Press. Many environmental groups support Cox’s suit, including the National Wildlife Federation.
“The reality we’re facing is we’ve got carp DNA six miles from Lake Michigan and no plan to keep them out,” Brammeier said. “As long as we believe this barrier has been breached, we have to take every precaution until we know those canals are free from carp.”
Cox wants to permanently cut off all connections between the inland waterways and the Great Lakes in what he calls “a matter of self defense” for Great Lakes states. “Thousands of jobs are at stake and we will not get a second chance once the carp enter Lake Michigan,” said Cox, who is seeking the Republican nomination for governor…
Heavy rains that set all-time records in Louisiana for the month of December have created unusually high water on the Morgan City-Port Allen Route near Bayou Sorrel, forcing the Marine Safety Unit in Baton Rouge to implement a safety zone closure.
Meanwhile, heavy rains in the central states created high water conditions on the Lower Mississippi River and, with the high water falling, shoaling has become an issue with the Corps of Engineers exhausting much of their dredging funds for Fiscal Year 2010, which only began in October.
The Corps has four hopper dredges working to restore the channel in the lower river, said Sean Duffy, executive director of the Gulf States Maritime Association, which focuses on deep-draft shipping.
The Corps hopper dredge Wheeler was working Cubit’s Gap at Mile 3 AHP. Three industry hopper dredges are working downriver with the Newport working Miles 12–14 BHP, Bayport working Miles 14–16 BHP, and the Terrapin Island working Miles 16–18 BHP. The Bayport was scheduled to leave December 24.
“The Wheeler is presently working as approved by the ‘Red Flag’ emergency protocol,” Duffy explained to his GSMA membership in an e-mail. “The Corps is also working on securing authorization to use its hopper dredge the McFarland via the Red Flag procedure.”…
A “News Alert” issued by the National Waterways Conference (NWC) December 17 advised the barge and towing industry that the House had passed a so-called jobs bill that would provide nearly $50 billion in infrastructure spending.
The Army Corps of Engineers is slated to receive $715 million for environmental restoration, flood protection, hydropower and navigation infrastructure projects. The Mississippi River and Tributaries project was allocated $30 million, and another $30 million would go to water-related environmental infrastructure assistance. In addition, the cost-share required by the Inland Waterways Trust Fund has been waived for projects covered by this allocation.
The Bureau of Reclamation was designated $100 million to provide clean, reliable drinking water to rural areas and to ensure adequate water supply to areas impacted by drought. Additional funding to ensure clean and safe drinking water supplies includes $1 billion for the Clean Water State Revolving Fund and $1 billion for the Safe Drinking Water State Revolving Fund.
The NWC said that the Senate is not expected to take up the bill (H.R. 2847) until January, but that its passage is less than certain, as it could get mired in other legislative initiatives….
Paducah, Ky.-area residents will have more opportunities to advance their marine careers when West Kentucky Community & Technical College begins offering several specialized programs geared toward seasoned marine industry employees and others “above the normal school age.” This is according to Andrew P. Gates, the school’s manager of External Education, during his remarks at a recent meeting of the Waterways Industries Association. Gates said the college is evaluating several classes and programs set to debut in 2011.
Gates is a graduate of the Merchant Marine Academy with a degree in logistics and intermodal transportation, and holds a Coast Guard license as second mate, unlimited tonnage-ocean. Being a younger mariner, the 26-year-old Gates is aware that the maritime industry is “getting older” and that knowledge is not being passed down to younger generations as well as it could be. He also noted that much of what the older mariners can pass along to new mariners is not current according to contemporary standards.
“The older generation is not up-to-date on the newer systems and operations,” he added.
The local college program will be similar to one being offered now at Marshall University in Huntington, W.Va. He said the college is also partnering with the Maine Maritime Academy in developing the program.
Much of it will be available online to better accommodate the schedules of working mariners, and will be augmented with on-campus labs where necessary, he added. Included in the multi-year program will be classes and courses offering customized skills training, leadership and effective communications improvement, pilothouse management, engineering programs, OSHA training, computer skills and other requirements as determined by requests from participating employers….
When the Seamen’s Church Institute was founded in Manhattan in 1834 by the Episcopal Church, the need for protective organizations for seamen was great. The 1928 book The Gangs of New York by Herbert Asbury (the same one Martin Scorsese used as the basis for his film of the same name) contains some chilling facts about the New York waterfront of the time.
On Water Street, running parallel with the East River, practically every building contained one or more dives. Many had saloons, dance halls, or brothels on every floor. Within a half mile north or south of 305 Water Street were 40 establishments with dance halls and prostitutes and 100 other “resorts.” Many of them were run by “crimps”—men who owned boarding houses and acted as labor brokers, taking a seaman’s wages in advance against his inflated board and bar bills. Many seamen were little more than indentured servants to the crimps, and some didn’t see their pay for years. An investigating committee found that during the late 1860s, “15,000 sailors were annually robbed of more than $2 million in these places.”
Some seamen were “shanghaied”—drugged and kidnapped for involuntary service aboard ship. Given knockout drops in doctored drinks, the seaman would be slipped through trap doors in the floor. By the time he awoke, he’d be aboard an outbound ship, not to see his home for years. For at least 35 years, this thoroughfare was probably the scene of more violent crime than any street on the continent.
In this neighborhood, the Young Men’s Missionary Society of New York established a floating chapel, The Church of the Savior, made of cedar in a striking Gothic style and featuring a marble font in the shape of a ship’s capstan. (By 1844, the group was formally chartered as the Protestant Episcopal Church Missionary Society for Seamen. It later became the Seamen’s Church Institute.) Stretched across two barges, the chapel could hold 500 people. A second chapel opened in 1846, the Floating Chapel of the Holy Comforter in the Hudson River. It was closed in 1868 and moved to a shoreside location on Houston and West Streets. Fighting the exploitation of seamen, and educating them about crooked practices, was an important part of the SCI’s early mission. By 1910, the Church of the Savior was sold and dragged ashore as St. Ann’s Chapel on Staten Island….
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