Seapower - April 2008

Dangerous Cargo
Coast Guard’s Inland River Vessel Movement Center monitors
movement of goods on the nation’s water ‘highways’

By DAISY RIDGWAY KHALIFA, Special Correspondent

Win-Win Situation

The nation’s 10,000-mile river system, which includes more than 15 major water “ highways,” are nothing less than an economic lifeline for moving manufacturing and agricultural commodities throughout the United States. For centuries, people have relied on the transit of these goods — usually in bulk — along the rivers.

Before 2003, the transport on massive barges of fertilizers, metals and chemicals, among thousands of other goods, carried on unremarkably, year in and year out — part of a day-to-day routine peculiar to industrial trade. Few, save for those inside the industry, were generally aware that many of these barges carried hundreds of tons of certain dangerous cargos (CDCs), or what one Coast Guard official referred to as “the worst of the worst” substances, gravely harmful to humans and the environment.

These so-called building-block commodities include ammonium nitrate, a dry bulk fertilizer, and toxic inhalation gases (THCs) such as butadiene for making plastic, propelyn oxide, chlorine and anhydrous ammonia, which is shipped as a refrigerated liquid at minus 432 degrees Fahrenheit. Anhydrous ammonia is widely used in soil, for metal treatment

and in pharmaceuticals and plastics. If released into the atmosphere as a gas and ingested, it can cause chemical burns to the lungs.

After 9/11, information on barge cargo traffic on the inland rivers, in particular the abundance of CDCs being shipped daily, was deemed critical data in terms of the mandate for improved maritime domain awareness. As a result, the Coast

Guard developed a tracking system known as the Inland River Vessel Movement Center (IRVMC). The program was established in St. Louis in 2003 and staffed with 20 Coast Guard Reservists, who were charged to gather, display and disseminate position reports on all inland river barges to the local Coast Guard and other government agencies so they could be in a better position for response and mitigation activities.

Burt Lahn, a marine transportation specialist with the Coast Guard’s Waterways Management Directorate and the program manager for IRVMC, said that after 9/11, the Coast Guard felt there was no tracking visibility of barges moving CDCs on the Western river system above mile marker 235 on the Mississippi, which is a high-traffic fleeting area in Baton Rouge, La. He said the Coast Guard saw an increased risk associated with limited, if not nonexistent, maritime domain awareness on the Western rivers and that the agency needed to know the locations and intentions of barges transporting CDCs.

The information collected by the IRVMC system includes a general description of the commodity, the number of tons being transported, vessel specifications and its destination.

The Coast Guard Reservists in St. Louis established the initial procedures on how the information was going to be received and processed in 2003. They also

The IRVMC gives the Coast Guard frequent position updates on vessels carrying potentially dangerous cargo, thereby lessening the reporting burden on towing vessel operators.