Page 10: of Marine News Magazine (November 2020)

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BY THE NUMBERS

Aids to Navigation Challenges

The U.S. Coast Guard’s list of statutory missions is large challenges include decreased availability of vessels to service and growing. Among these is the care and maintenance of ATON, reduced ability to provide routine ATON servicing tens of thousands of aids to navigation (ATON) dispersed in a timely manner due to severe weather, among other fac- across the conterminous United States, Alaska, Hawaii, tors, and limited capacity at ATON major repair and refur-

Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa and even activities bishment facilities. The Coast Guard has developed plans in Saipan, Singapore and Japan—certainly no easy task, to guide the ATON program, and these plans have led to as addressed in a U.S. Government Accountability Of? ce the development and implementation of various initiatives

Report earlier this year. at the headquarters and ? eld unit levels to address these chal-

As of November 2019, the Coast Guard managed lenges. However, GAO found that the initiatives do not con- 45,664 federal ? xed and ? oating ATON that are designed tain certain elements that help ensure effective implemen- to assist those operating in the U.S. Marine Transporta- tation—such as desired outcomes and schedule milestones tion System, which includes about 25,000 miles of water- and completion dates—as recommended by leading pro- ways, 1,000 harbor channels, 300 ports and 3,700 termi- gram management practices. According to Coast Guard of- nals. According to the Coast Guard, as of July 2018, these ? cials, they are still developing guidance and procedures for

ATON had a collective replacement value of about $1.6 ATON-related initiatives that are to be implemented by the billion. The Coast Guard has faced an array of challenges districts. By updating these initiatives to include certain ele- in managing its ATON, such as deteriorating buoys and ments, such as the speci? c outcomes desired and timeframes questions have been raised regarding the extent to which for completing them, the Coast Guard would have better the Coast Guard is addressing these challenges. assurance that its initiatives to address ATON management

In recent years, the condition of the U.S. Coast Guard’s challenges will be effectively implemented, GAO found.

ATON have declined slightly while the overall costs for The Department of Homeland Security concurred with repairing or replacing them increased. According to Coast the recommendation and stated that the Coast Guard

Guard data, its key metric for ATON condition—the Aid plans to review and update ATON-related initiatives to

Availability Rate, or percentage of time that ATON are func- include speci? c outcomes with associated implementation tioning correctly—declined from 98% to 97.1% during milestones by December 31, 2020.

? scal years 2014 through 2018, dipping slightly below the 97.5% target rate in ? scal years 2017 and 2018. During this time period, the overall costs to repair and replace ATON increased from about $12 million in ? scal year 2014 to about $20 million in ? s- cal year 2018. According to Coast

Guard data, the majority of the costs for ? xed ATON were spent on repairs whereas the majority of the costs for ? oating ATON were spent on replacements.

The Coast Guard has devel- oped plans and initiatives to ad- dress its ATON challenges, but it has limited assurance that the plans and initiatives will be ef- fectively implemented. Accord-

Source: GAO based on USCG data ing to Coast Guard of? cials, the

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