Dale Roth, Carpenters' District Council of Greater St. Louis & Vicinity
The marine industry today has this same passion when it comes to policy making. The real challenge is to harness this passion in the most effective manner. Supporting candidates; hill visits to inform staff and policy makers directly; engaging the customers, vendors and friends you conduct business with; participating in advisory and industry associations are all examples of ways to facilitate the process.
Tim Richardson, American Land Conservancy
important to all of us and the more wide-based support the coalition can bring, the more likely our waterways will get the attention they need and deserve. I would encourage the coalition to do more to educate the general public about the importance of our river systems. So many of them only think of our rivers when they cross over a bridge. Our citizens should be aware of just how important the waterways are to their daily lives.
What are the greatest technical challenges facing our industry? Peter Evans, Marathon Petroleum Company
Dale Roth, Business Representative of the Carpenters' District Council of Greater St. Louis & Vicinity, has been a life-long resident of Ste. Genevieve, Missouri on the Mississippi River.
Royce C. Wilken, American River Transportation Company
Royce Wilken, President of American River Transportation Company has spent 30 years with the Archer Daniels Midland Company (ADM). Wilken served as Chairman of the Board of the American Waterways Operators in 20072008 and participated on various Towing Safety Action Committees. He also received a 2004 White House appointment to serve as Chairman of the Inland Waterways User Board.
As with Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) authorization, winning in the Senate is pivotal to winning in Congress. Winning support from Mississippi River Senators for the WRDA agenda is a must, especially Senators from the Upper Mississippi where the lock and dam system is located. Without their active support the rest of the country won't fund WRDA. Expanding the WRDA coalition by adding sportsmen's groups offers the best avenue to raise the coalition's political clout. The labor, agriculture, navigation, environmental and hunter and angler coalition would total around 70 to 80 percent of the electorate in states like Wisconsin, Minnesota, Missouri and Iowa and over 50 percent in Illinois. All these states ought to be solidly behind what the WRDA coalition is offering the region in terms of jobs, competitive agriculture, floodplain restoration and expanded recreational areas.
Dale Roth, Carpenters' District Council
I would like to compliment Waterways Council, Inc. for their foresight in expanding the coalition to include non-traditional waterways groups such as agriculture, labor and conservation. The waterways are
In today's world of "instant everything," we need to work toward improving reliable and cost-effective communications with all of our people, 100 percent of the time. Communication with the people on our boats is the greatest vessel-based technical challenge that I see. Marathon's strategy is to leverage communication technology to open up the path for collaboration between vessels and the shore. To a layman, petroleum barges may appear to be simple steel boxes that float. To Marathon, they are doublehulled floating terminals. They are fairly complex machines with a specific business purpose. For example, asphalt barges generally have six separate tank compartments. They generate their own electricity, have heating systems to keep the product hot and have engines and pumps to transfer the product. They have control systems like pipe manifolds, valves, tank gauges, thermometers and high level alarms. Further development of technologies that allow us to remotely monitor the operation of these barges would improve Marathon and the marine industry's management of these assets.
June 2009
32 MN