Page 111: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (September 1993)

Mississippi

River Update

Onomichi, Mitsubishi is able to ac- commodate the full 964-foot length of the R-type hull on its building berth. Consequently, these ships will not require lengthening before delivery to Evergreen.

Navy's MSTO Offers $3

Billion In Loan Guarantees

To Commercial Shipbuilders

The U.S. Navy's Maritime Sci- ence and Technology Office (MSTO) is offering federal loan guarantees of $3 billion for commercial ship- builders.

The loans may be used for ship- yard modernization as well as con- struction, and will be backed by $200 million in Department of Defense money transferred to the Maritime

Administration.

According to a House Armed Ser- vices Committee report, "The com- mittee believes that this defense conversion initiative will preserve the vendor base, critical skill levels, and provide opportunities for mod- ernization that will benefit both com- mercial construction and Navy con- struction in terms of lower costs and production options."

House Panel Cuts Sub Tech

Spending

The House Armed Services Com- mittee has decided to spend signifi- cantly less than in recent years on submarine technology, and turned its attention to a $100 million pro- gram to promote advanced mari- time technology. The Committee transferred $32.6 million from the administration's funding request for the Advanced Research Project

Agency's (ARPA) advanced subma- rine technology program into a new program designed to assist commer- cial shipbuilding.

Over $1 billion has been spent on advancing submarine technology since 1987, when Congress grew alarmed at the rapid advancement in the quieting of Soviet submarines.

Funding was further increased in 1989 when Congress received a re- port indicating Soviet sub technol- ogy was approaching the U.S.'s.

Winninghoff Chosen To Build 46-Foot OSRV

Winninghoff Boats, Inc. of

Rowley, Mass., was chosen to design and build a welded aluminum 46- foot OSRV for Clean Harbors Coop- erative of Edison, N.J. The vessel will be used for rapid response in the open waters, bays and rivers of New

York. Harbor.

Capabilities include the transpor- tation, deployment and maintenance of containment boom, portable and on-board skimming equipment as well as command post activities. An auxiliary hydraulics system will power the crane and skimming equipment.

With a full complement of crew, equipment and 2,000 feet of boom, the twin Volvo TAMD71A's are de- signed to deliver a top speed of 25 knots.

The 46- by 15-foot design is an in- house effort supplemented by

Woodin and Marean, Inc. Delivery is scheduled for this fall. For more information,

Circle 4 on Reader Service Card

At press time, the flooding of the

Mississippi River was still a source of many headaches. Here's the lat- est news:

Reportedly 18 bridges over the

Missouri River are closed, includ- ing U.S. 67 from St. Louis to Alton, 111., which crosses both the Missouri and the Mississippi Rivers.

Also closed is the U.S. 40 bridge, which runs just west of St. Louis.

This places heavy traffic on the 1-70 bridge, which was nearly closed due to high waters. The 1-70 is the only major bridge crossing the Missouri

River in the area between Kansas

City and St. Louis.

Other areas of transportation affected by the river's wrath are airports and the marine industry.

Twenty airports are reportedly closed, including The Spirit of St.

Louis Airport at Chesterfield, Mo., a large general aviation airport in a northern suburb of St. Louis, which is under nine feet of water.

The U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) is now resetting buoys on the Missis- sippi from Dubuque to St. Paul, and has finished setting buoys on the

Illinois River above Peoria. As many as 7,000 river barges are estimated to have been affected by the closing of the Mississippi and its tributar- ies. The river has been closed to through traffic from Cairo, 111., where the Ohio River meets the

Mississippi, north to Minneapolis-

St. Paul. The USCG has also im- posed speed restrictions on a stretch of the Mississippi 200 miles south of

Cairo, due to the risk of wake dam- age to saturated levees. Locks 1-16 are now open, but are being used only for limited local commercial traf- fic.

Government, Barge Lines

Establish Flood Data Center

A central command post for post- flood news has been set up to supply barge lines with the flood informa- tion they need as the Mississippi

River re-opens.

Maritime Reporter and Engineer- ing News spoke to Wally Feld, as- sistant chief for construction and operations in St. Louis for the Army

Corps of Engineers. According to

Mr. Feld, business was slow at the center's starting date, July 26, but has picked up.

News is available about any Mis- sissippi lock conditions, delays or service restrictions on other closed rivers, which can have a tremendous impact on haulage and crew cost planning for barge lines and supply planning by customers such as grain export elevators and coal-needy utili- ties. The idea for a flood data center came from the combined efforts of the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG), the

Army Corps of Engineers and two federal river agencies and barging leaders who make up a River Indus- try Executive Task Force.

The flood data center will be an expanded version of the data center the industry used jointly with the

Coast Guard and Army Corps of

Engineers during the 1988 drought.

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September, 1993 Circle 209 on Reader Service Card Circle 246 on Reader Service Card 105

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