On December 10, 2013, Canal Barge Company partnered with Living Lands & Waters (LL&W) to host a Mississippi River clean-up in New Orleans. Students enrolled in the AP Environmental Science program at Newman High School also joined CBC employees for the event. The energetic and passionate LL&W crew made the day educational and the group had a great time removing trash from the river bank.

Living Lands & Waters Founder and President Chad Pregracke grew up on the Mississippi River in East Moline, Illinois and has made it his mission to take care of neglected rivers. Most recently, Pregracke was awarded the 2013 CNN Hero of the Year award for his efforts in removing unsightly and toxic accumulations of trash along rivers’ banks. Check out the article and video on CNN’s website here.  Since 1998, nearly 70,000 volunteers have helped Pregracke and his non-profit remove more than 7 million pounds of garbage from 23 rivers across the country.

Living Lands & Waters was last in New Orleans in the fall of 2005 when they brought supplies down river and helped clean up after Hurricane Katrina. Pregracke said, “We are honored and pleased to have so much support in the New Orleans area.  We are happy to return, after 8 years, to bring the health of our rivers to the attention of everyone who depends upon them, and then working to improve it.”

We are proud to support such a great organization and give back to the river that has made 80 years of successful operations possible for CBC!

Today, Friday, December 6, 2013, is Canal Barge Company’s 80th anniversary. Since 1933 we have provided high-quality marine transportation and management service to our customers, and we continue to grow our capabilities and service offerings. Thanks to everyone who has supported CBC over the decades, and congratulations to all current and former members of the CBC family!

On October 31, 2013, Canal Barge Company and Illinois Marine Towing conducted their Annual Vessel Security Exercise. We want to thank all of our captains for their great work conducting the exercise. Also, we were fortunate to have two members of Coast Guard Sector New Orleans participate with the shoreside team tracking the exercise. The Annual Vessel Security Exercise is an example of CBC and IMT’s commitment to safe, secure, and compliant operations.

We’re proud to announce that all CBC boats have been re-examined by the U.S. Coast Guard under their Uninspected Towing Vessel (UTV) Examination Programs and received decals indicating that they are compliant with Coast Guard regulations. All boats had been issued decals three years ago but they expired this year and so were required to be re-examined. While this program is voluntary, it is important to both CBC and our customers that our boats have up-to-date decals indicating that they are compliant with regulations. The examinations are part of the Towing Vessel Bridging Program, which is a joint program between the towing industry and the Coast Guard to prepare vessels to comply with the forthcoming Subchapter M regulation.

Our success is thanks to the hard work of Assistant Port Captain Daryl Wheeler and all of our Captains. Daryl’s working with the boats and scheduling the exams at a convenient time for each boat and good working relationship with local Coast Guard examiners allowed us to finish all but one boat ahead of schedule (the last boat was delayed by the government shutdown at the beginning of October). We’re proud to say that, even with that delay, we were still the first of the major towing vessel companies to have our entire fleet be re-examined.

Canal Barge Company has experienced a steady pace of growth over the last decade and our Operations Headquarters, located in Belle Chasse, Louisiana, has become increasingly important to the management of our daily operations as well as interaction with our valued customers and vendors. We are proud to announce the completion of some major improvements to our Operations Headquarters including painting the full exterior, renovating the main conference room and restrooms, and installing a new office trailer to provide additional meeting space and offices as our employee base continues to expand. A special thanks to Keith Cavanagh, CBC Buyer/Warehouse Supervisor, for managing the vendors and the workflow to minimize disruption to CBC’s business. Below is a photo of the repainted office complete with new a Canal Barge sign.

We are watching Tropical Storm Karen in the Gulf of Mexico and making active preparations according to our Storm Preparedness and Response Plan to protect our people, equipment and facilities and to continue our operations as normally as possible over the weekend. As of this point, please continue to use your normal means of contacting Canal Barge Company. If conditions change in the New Orleans area, we will post further guidance on alternate contact information or other messages.

Please stay safe and ensure that you and your family are in a safe place with proper provisions for the storm. As always, CBC’s priority is the safety of our people, our equipment, our customers’ cargoes, and the environment.

Message from Merritt Lane, President and CEO of Canal Barge Company:

Earlier this year, I announced that Tom Smith, our long-time Vice President of Human Resources, would be transitioning to a new position of Vice President of Quality and Customer Service on our Operations Team, and that we were conducting an extensive nationwide search for a new CBC Vice President of Human Resources. That search is now complete.

I am extremely pleased to announce that Troy Remy has joined the Canal Barge Company family as our new Vice President of Human Resources.  Troy has over 20 years’ experience in progressive Human Resources management positions in industries as diverse as energy, aggregates and marine transportation.

As most of you know, we believe that people make the difference at Canal Barge Company. Accordingly, we have made every effort to be thoughtful in making this critically important decision. I am confident that we have found the right HR Leader in Troy.

Please join me in welcoming Troy and his family to the CBC family!

Sincerly,
Merritt

On May 23, 2013, the Chamber of Shipping of America (CSA) honored the U.S. Maritime Industry for safe marine operations at the Annual Safety Awards Luncheon held at the Loews Hotel in New Orleans. Jones F. Devlin Awards are given to vessels that have operated for at least two years without a lost-time injury.

At Canal Barge Company, we know that confidence starts with good people and we are proud to announce a total of 18 CBC towboats and 2 Illinois Marine Towing (IMT) towboats earned 2012 Jones F. Devlin honors. Five CBC vessels have operated 10 consecutive years or more without a lost-time injury! Canal Barge continues to be proud of our exceptional crews for demonstrating our strong commitment to safety and environmental stewardship.

MV ELIZABETH HUGER – 17 years
MV NED MERRICK – 14 years
MV CHOCTAW – 11 years
MV LIBERTY – 11 years
MV SPIRIT – 11 years
MV MARY LUCY LANE – 9 years
MV CAROLINE – 7 years
MV MARIAN HAGESTAD – 7 years
MV HAMILTON – 6 years
MV ELLY LANE – 6 years
MV JOSEPH M. JONES – 6 years
MV LAKE CHARLES – 6 years
MV BULL CALF – 5 years
MV KILLIAN L. HUGER – 5 years
MV MERRICK JONES – 4 years
MV INNOVATOR – 4 years
MV CHANNAHON – 3 years (IMT vessel)
MV MARY C – 2 years (IMT vessel)

Canal Barge Company CFO Doug Downing and Port of New Orleans President and CEO Gary LaGrange joined Peter Ricchiuti, Assistant Dean at Tulane University’s A.B. Freeman School of Business, for WWNO’s “Out to Lunch” program. Each week, the “Out to Lunch” program features guests from the New Orleans business community joining Peter for an interview over lunch at Commander’s Palace.

Doug, Gary and Peter discussed the national importance of waterways commerce and why the Port and river system is vital to New Orleans and our local economy. To listen to the interview, click here.

On April 19, NPR ran a story on the Mississippi River system. Del Wilkins, Canal Barge Company VP of Northern Operations and Business Development, discusses how critical barge transportation is to the nation, as well as the inland river infrastructure that keeps it running. The full text of the article is below. To access the story on NPR’s website, or listen to their audio file of the story, please visit their website here: http://www.npr.org/2013/04/25/177954961/mississippi-rivers-many-parents-look-to-unify?sc=17&f=2.

Mississippi River’s Many ‘Parents’ Look To Unify

by David Schaper
April 19, 2013

Life on the Mississippi River is a roller coaster of highs and lows: record high floodwaters one year, a drought and near-record low water levels the next. And those are just two of the many problems faced by river stakeholders like barge operators, farmers and conservation groups.

Those stakeholders met recently in Chicago to discuss the Mississippi’s most pressing needs, any common ground, and how to speak with a unified voice in advocating for the nation’s largest river system.

So far, that hasn’t been easy.

Critical, Crumbling Lifeline

Sixty percent of the nation’s agricultural exports move by barge up and down the Mississippi River system, as do billions of dollars’ worth of petroleum, coal, steel and other commodities. It’s a critical lifeline for the nation’s economy, but one not without problems.

One of the problems is infrastructure, like locks and dams, canal walls, flood walls and levees, says Del Wilkins with the Canal Barge Co., which operates barges and tows all throughout the Mississippi River system. “Infrastructure is old, and it’s crumbling,” he says.

Wilkins says one barge can carry the freight equivalent of 144 trucks or 46 rail cars, yet the nation’s water infrastructure, he says, is generally left out of the transportation funding conversation in Washington — until there’s a crisis. And over the past two years, the Mississippi River has endured two near-catastrophes.

“The extremes that this nation has faced in the heartland — from the largest recorded flood in the history of the lower Mississippi River, which is pretty astonishing, to the worst drought in over 50 years and all the challenges that brings — has clearly focused political attention in a way that we haven’t seen in quite a while on the issue of navigation,” says Maj. Gen. John Peabody, commander of the Mississippi Valley Division of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Those weather disasters led to the Corps blowing up a levee to operate a floodway one year, and then blowing apart underwater rock outcroppings to keep barges from running aground the next.

There are almost constant dredging needs up and down the river. There are not only issues with the locks and dams, but some levees may not withstand the next great flood; and then there’s the battle against invasive species such as the Asian carp.

And all the channeling of the Mississippi upriver is diverting freshwater and vital sediment away from the wetlands in the river’s Louisiana delta. The state’s Lt. Gov. Jay Dardenne says that’s got to stop.

“We’re steadily losing Louisiana’s coastline, the equivalent of a football field of land in less than an hour, literally. And that’s just gonna accelerate if something’s not done,” Dardenne says.

‘800 Parents’

Other problems along the Mississippi include industrial pollution, as well as farm, chemical and nutrient runoff, affecting water quality all the way down to the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico.

And while the Mississippi River is the lifeblood of a huge swath of the nation’s economy, it’s also a life source for nearly half of the nation’s migratory birds, a quarter of our fish species and the source of drinking water for millions of residents.

“When you’re talking about sustaining the river, you have to look at it from an environmental standpoint, from an economic standpoint, from a navigation standpoint, and every aspect of life along that river affects every other aspect of life along the river,” Dardenne says.

The problem is that there are so many divergent interests along the Mississippi and its tributaries across 31 different states.

“The system is so large, it intimidates cooperation,” says Val Marmillion, managing director of America’s Wetland Foundation. He says that as a result, the Mississippi’s problems are usually addressed only on a crisis-by-crisis basis.

Mark Davis, director of the Tulane Institute on Water Resources Law and Policy, agrees and says that’s led to a balkanized Mississippi River management.

“We don’t treat it as though it’s a river. For us, it’s like a child that has 800 parents,” Davis says.

That leaves the river an orphan, Davis says, whose needs are not always funded as a priority.

America’s Wetland Foundation is trying to create a coalition to speak on behalf of river issues with one voice. It also wants a compact among the Mississippi River states, similar to that signed by Great Lakes governors five years ago — one that protects the Mississippi River system for all the competing interests in it.