o'neill
Surviving Operation Big Tow's Turbulent Wake
Randy O'Neill is Senior Vice President, Lancer Insurance Company. For more information, contact Randy at roneill@lancer-ins.com; Tel: (516) 4314441, x3300.
At our exhibit booth at last month's International Workboat Show in New Orleans, we were repeatedly asked how increased enforcement by the U.S. Coast Guard in the "Operation Big Tow" program could impact a licensed deck or engineering officer working onboard a towboat. The answer? In many ways, and none of them good. The incident which led to Operation Big Tow, which began in November and is due to continue through January '09, was the July 23rd oil spill involving the towing vessel Mel Oliver and its fuel barge which split in two when it turned in front of an oncoming ocean vessel, the Tintomana. The damaged barge released approximately 280,000 gallons of No. 6 fuel into the Mississippi River and shut down commerce on the vital waterway for several days as salvage and cleanup crews worked feverishly to clean up the mess. As big a problem as that was, Coast Guard investigators were shocked to find that the Mel Oliver towboat was being operated by a pilot who only had an apprentice mate's license and was not qualified to man the bridge without a licensed captain present. The boat's regular captain had allegedly left the vessel for several days to attend to personal business. Further investigation revealed that officials of the boat's charterer allowed the apprentice to steer the boat without required supervision and gave him additional compensation for performing a licensed captain's duties. It seemed that the deeper investigators dug the more troublesome the violations they discovered. To wit, American Waterways Operators had dropped the charterer, DRD Towing, from its ranks only three months earlier in August after it failed a safety audit in which more than 50 violations were found, including insufficient paperwork on crewmember training.
Big Tow's Directed at Licenses
license holders by Coast Guard personnel. Inspectors have set up shop at the Industrial Canal to board transiting towboats and are also performing inspections at locks and dams when tows are waiting in transit. Interestingly, Operation Big Tow was authorized by Congress in 2004, but wasn't implemented until the Mel Oliver collision, resulting oil spill and white-hot media attention that followed. In the wake of the July incident, Michael White, responsible for towboat enforcement activities for U.S.C.G.'s 8th District, told the New Orleans Time-Picayune, "Big Tow is directed at licenses." Given this increased enforcement mandate as the result of the Mel Oliver collision, USCG investigators have the latitude to not only take action against officers exceeding their level of operating authority, but potentially be more aggressive investigating other collisions, groundings and allisions in which negligence on behalf of the involved license holders might be assumed. In other words, otherwise competent brown water officers who get involved in towboat accidents might be painted with the Mel Oliver brush and will be either offered to accept a "Settlement Agreement" immediately following their incident....which usually involves a license suspension of some duration...or be charged with negligence and forced to defend themselves in an Administrative Law proceeding. The answer? A personal license insurance policy.
Protect Yourself & Your Family
One of the immediate effects of the ongoing Operation Big Tow enforcement program is the intense scrutiny of
20 MN
For as little as $1 a day, towboat officers can have the peace of mind that comes with an insurance policy that guarantees to fully pay the fees associated with engaging a premier maritime attorney to protect their licenses, their livelihoods and their professional reputations. One annual premium payment provides unlimited legal defense and, if requested, full or partial income protection should their license be suspended for up to 12 months or reduced in grade. The cost of this valuable protection is remarkably affordable, particularly in light of the benefit of tapping into the nation's finest network of maritime attorneys. In fact, "going it alone" means that a mariner involved in an incident requiring him to retain an attorney on his own should be prepared to pay the same amount for two hours of billings as he would for having the peace of mind that comes with 12 months of unlimit(Continued on page 23)
January 2009