Edit post

Edit your reply below.

Post Body
Enter your post below.
[quote user="jeaton"] Looking at the several links to the history of the Corp of Engineers, we find that Congress was responding to the needs to improve navagation as early as 1850, just about 57 years before the Sprague set the record for tow size.[/quote]And this means what?  The real channel improvements didn't even start until the mid 20th century.  Before that, it was mostly snag removal and such.The point I made which you discounted was that barging preceded modern waterway maintenance.[quote]Oh yes, when did the barges lines start to pay-as you claim-all their cost for the waterways?  Could we say 1978 when the Inland Waterways Trust Fund was established?[/quote]Exactly.  Right about the time the eco-types started demanding an EIS for regular maintenance dredging.  Not suprisingly, that's when dredging costs started to skyrocket relative to prior maintenance venues.I'll repeat the kicker here for your benefit - What other mode has to have an EIS every time ROW maintenance is required?  Only barging.  And before you claim that railroads are different due to private ROW ownership, keep in mind that Amtrak owns the NEC, and Amtrak is allowed to perform regular maintenance without the EIS requirement.  Same with public highways.How do you think the railroads would fare if they had to complete an EIS every time they wanted to perform maintenance?  Not too well, I think you'd agree.[quote]  So where do you get the 50% of the *cost* is environment work.  [/quote]I shouldn't have to provide a rock solid comprehensive study to support this hypothesis, as anyone who has been involved in the permitting/lawsuits/delays et al of these projects would be able to confirm this point of view, especially as it relates to a very basic physical function such as river dredging.  What is dredging?  You scoop or suck out the muck and rock, and deposit it somewhere other than the navigation channel.  By all accounts, such an activity is a simple, relatively low cost endeveour.  It's not rocket science, nor is it a major construction project.  Even you, Jay, could operate a dredging barge with little training and expertise!Yet environmental litigiousness has caused the related costs of such a basic maintenance function to rise exponentially.I'll state this with the obvious candor it deserves - it shouldn't cost no $2 billion to dredge the Mississippi shipping channel from NO to SL and beyond.  It probably could be done for a few hundred million at most by a run-of-the-mill dredging firm.  I would venture that dredging the entire length of the Mississippi once every 10 or so years would cost less than the cost of maintaining one of the parallel railroads to Class IV standards.  Of course, the only difference is one has to put up with EIS regs for what should by all acounts be regular maintenance, and one doesn't.I'll challenge you on this - find any EIS related to any project of any scope, and look at the cost/benefit analysis.  You'll probably conclude as I do that the costs of the environmental mitigation are very real (e.g. someone's gotta write the check and draw on the balance), while the benefits of the eco-mitigation are mostly theoretical, e.g. what might have happened to some eco-aspect if the mitigation didn't take place, e.g. no check coming in to replace the balance.
Tags (Optional)
Tags are keywords that get attached to your post. They are used to categorize your submission and make it easier to search for. To add tags to your post type a tag into the box below and click the "Add Tag" button.
Add Tag