A major challenge waterways operators face in 2011 is the critical need to avoid “collateral damage” to the tugboat and towboat industry in proposed federal legislation related to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
The industry has been erroneously, and harmfully, included in proposed legislation to prevent another catastrophic spill that should be focused on deep-water oil drilling rigs, and not tugboats, towboats or barges. The risk profiles of the two industries are completely different: A tank barge simply could never have the kind of catastrophic spill an oil rig can have. The 206 million barrels of oil spilled in the Deepwater Horizon incident is 45,000 times the total amount of oil spilled by barges in all of 2009. In fact, tank barge spills have plummeted 99.6 percent in 20 years, reaching their lowest recorded level — 4,347 gallons — in 2009. At the height of the Deepwater Horizon spill, that quantity of oil escaped from the ocean floor every two minutes.
A second challenge is getting the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to release historic regulations establishing the first-ever towing vessel inspection regime. The notice of proposed rule-making has languished at the DHS for more than 18 months despite calls for its release in order to increase towing industry safety from key members of Congress, and the industry itself. The regulations will institute a modern, innovative approach to towing vessel inspection unique to the towing industry and based on a safety management system. The new program will preserve limited Coast Guard resources by using a risk-based approach to inspection and Coast Guard-approved third-party auditors.
Finally, we will need to be vigilant in assuring the preservation of federal authority over interstate commerce. When states attempt to usurp that authority and create their own rules for operations in individual state waters, for example, the result is a patchwork of conflicting and confusing regulations that impedes interstate commerce and decreases, rather than enhances, marine safety.