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Repeal the Foreign Dredge Act of 1906

106 points by barry-cotter 5y ago

barry-cotter 5y ago
> if I had to pick one policy that was the Platonic ideal of stupid, the thing that has almost zero upside and also has the best ratio of 'amount of damage this is doing to America’ versus ‘reasons why we can’t stop being idiots about this’ there is (so far) a clear winner. > We must repeal the Foreign Dredge Act of 1906. It says, to paraphrase, no underwater digging - to repair ports, or build bigger ones, or fix waterways - unless the boat doing the digging was built in the US, and is owned and operated by Americans. … > The direct cost savings (as in, if we did the current set of jobs cheaper and faster) depends on the current size of the market. If we take the 5% at face value and the 11 billion worldwide size estimate here, and assume roughly 50% cost savings, we get $250 million/year. At a 5% discount rate we can value that at about $5 billion, plus the benefits of getting projects done faster, and doing more projects. Already this seems to be approaching the 1000:1 ratio where economic interventions make sense, but the real benefits are in what you do with the jobs you wouldn’t have otherwise done. > If the estimate of 1.6 million jobs checks out, we are already talking about single digit costs per job created, which should already compare favorably with third-world interventions even without any of the additional indirect benefits, of which there are many. The impact on inflation could be substantial even within a few years.
bombcar 4y ago
Sounds like the Army Corps of Engineers should get themselves a big dredger.
- frankharv 4y ago
  Army Corps had a whole fleet of dredges. Then politics. Now they have just a few. It was deliberately farmed out to private companies. On the East Coast We keep the dredge McFarland for the crucial work. That is it.. I hear the Mississippi River has quite a few still.
DantesKite 4y ago
What's remarkable to me that the Wikipedia page for such an impactful law wasn't created until 3 days ago. It'll be pretty cool if an online group of observant people manage to change this law.
- HarryHirsch 4y ago
  Evidently the Wikipedia entry is part of a lobbying effort, and it's working.
8note 4y ago
It's weird that this and the Jones act don't come under NAFTA
- barry-cotter 4y ago
  It’s not like the US was dealing with anything resembling equals in setting up NAFTA. Canada and Mexico had much more to gain than the US so they had very little negotiating leverage.
  - ggm 4y ago
    Most Favoured Nation status should apply. Or what's called the BOOT: better off overall test. Exclusion of the US from the AsiaPac trade round made everyone else better off! The US basically screws everyone: no Australian US trade agreement in recent history has been BOOT for Australia, US states also apply random rules which nullify much Australian trade advantages: BHP was blocked from building some minerals processing in California IIRC. A rather anti US subtext in "love actually" is based on populist common belief: in trade negotiations cross administration the US is a 900lb gorilla bully. The push back by farming lobbies in the UK to US chicken is an unusual example of holding ground. Consumer sentiment lined-up for once. Undoubtedly ammonia rinsed chicken would be cheaper.
    - barry-cotter 4y ago
      Any agreement that does not make the parties better off overall is rejected because it is quite literally worse than nothing. That an agreement does not split gains equally between participants because they don’t have equal leverage in no way means that trade agreements freely entered into make the participants worse off.
      - ggm 4y ago
        The lived experience for most Australian trading is that bilats and multilats with the US are net negative. You have to take a view that things are only better if cheaper, even if you drive your own food security to the floor. It destroyed the Australian car parts sector, and ultimately Ford and GMH left Australia.
akgoel 4y ago
The Odd Lots podcast from Bloomberg just did an episode on the Foreign Dredge Act. As a Houstonian, I was shocked to learn that the Port of Houston is being hobbled by our inability to dredge properly, limiting container vessels to once a week, and slowing down oil tanker shipments. There is currently only one narrow lane that is dredged, and opening a second lane would improve traffic flow quadratically.
serf 4y ago
given the terrible dangers to aquatic ecosystems associated with dredging, I don't know if citing the feet per hour is going to win a lot of fans to the cause -- which is then further compounded by this defense > That doesn’t rule out a position of roughly ‘yes this is a no-good-very-bad way of limiting how much we dredge but it does limit it and that is what matters.’ > I don’t know how to engage with that perspective as anything but opposition to civilization. If you don’t think we should maintain or create ports, make it possible to navigate rivers or free ships that get stuck - which are the primary reasons people dredge - then that’s not compatible with having a technological civilization. Perhaps there are other ways to work around that and still have a technological civilization, but they are orders of magnitude worse in terms of their consequences for the Earth. I'm of the opinion that we should learn to use our sprawling ports in the United States more efficiently rather than stacking more inefficient ports[0] across all of our coast -- especially given the tremendous ecological cost of what we already have -- and apparently that stance is defined by the author as 'opposition to civilization' and not even worthy of rebuttal. Hard disagree. Look around the U.S. ports and identify the bottlenecks mentioned; it's rarely marine-space related -- it's almost entirely logistical or occupational related -- bigger ports will require more employees that don't even exist in large enough quantity now to fill the roles needed even today -- and this is aside from the additional employees needed for the larger dredging operations. "jobs created" means precisely zero in skilled trades without a captive and waiting audience -- these people will need to be trained and placed -- it can't just be spun from nothing over-night. (I have lived in Wilmington, the number one port in the U.S. in commerce value) tl;dr : let's fix ports rather than making more broken ports and ruining our seas. [0]: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/california-ports-key-us-supply-chain-among-worlds-least-efficient-2021-10-20/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/california-ports-key-us-sup...
Animats 4y ago
It turned out that the guy with the Youtube video complaining that the US didn't have a dredge big enough for the job had calculated wrong. Donjon-Smit, out of Houston TX, brought in dredges and cranes, unloaded about 500 containers in a few days, did enough dredging to free up the now-lightened ship, and towed it out. The Ever Forward spent a few days in Baltimore being unloaded and repaired, and then went on to Norfolk, then New York, and is now waiting to transit the Panama Canal. The US doesn't have huge dredging capacity because it has good deepwater ports. Compare the Port of Shanghai, where 32 km of bridges, artificial islands, and extensive dredging were needed just to get to deep water.
- barry-cotter 4y ago
  > The US doesn't have huge dredging capacity because it has good deepwater ports. I suggest reading the article. Dredging the Mississippi five inches deeper would increase profits of the soybean industry alone by over $2 billion a year, IIRC. There’s a lot more than soybeans that travels on the Mississippi and reducing carrying costs would make all kinds of freight cheaper.
  - Animats 4y ago
    Five feet deeper.[1] The big holdup on that was a deal which exempted Louisiana from the usual requirement that the state pay half the cost. Now, the Federal government is paying three-quarters of the cost. There's a big barge lobby. Barges don't pay for US waterway use. There's a tax on fuel, but it pays maybe 10% of the cost of maintaining waterways. [1] https://garretgraves.house.gov/media-center/in-the-news/dredging-mississippi-river-50-feet-clears-corps-approval-hurdle https://garretgraves.house.gov/media-center/in-the-news/dred...
    - barry-cotter 4y ago
      Thank you for the correction. Re:barges and paying for infrastructure. Who cares? User pays is nice in principle but if there are massive positive externalities of doing something the government should do it. That’s what taxes and the idea of the public good are for. The benefits of cheaper transport do not accrue mostly to barge companies.
aaron695 4y ago
pyuser583 4y ago
I live near a system of lakes, connected by locks and rivers. A few years ago there was strong rain, and they started to flood. The city usually opens a lock, to let a larger lake drain into a smaller lake. Only, there was so much sediment, it clogged up the lock! Now the city needs to spend 10s of millions on dollars to drudge the lakes.
bombcar 4y ago
Theory: a huge dredge would save $500 million in a contract. Fact: a huge dredge ship might cost $250-300 million or more. Problem: then buying one to do the project and then throwing it away would save money. But this isn’t being done. I have my suspicions about how much money would actively be saved, and note a bunch of “remove any and all safeguards”.
- barry-cotter 4y ago
  > Problem: then buying one to do the project and then throwing it away would save money. But this isn’t being done. I suggest reading the article. Under the Act all US dredges must be built in the US. A US entity buying one doesn’t make using it in the US legal.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    So build one in the US. Unless the argument is such as ship is literally impossible to build in the US, the numbers don’t add up. If the savings would really be so high someone would do it. I suspect that even with a max size dredger the savings would be minimal, if any.
    - bobthepanda 4y ago
      The cost of building a dredge also involves the cost of labor hours required to build it. American labor hours are more expensive. You can’t just import the Belgian and Dutch workers building the world class dredges at their salaries for the purpose of supplanting domestic workers.
      - rtpg 4y ago
        I do agree that labor hours can be costly, but if we're looking at Western Europe as a competitor to America, then surely we're looking at a situation where labor costs should be lower? Surely? Like Belgian and Dutch workers aren't going to be cheap either, right?
haunter 4y ago
>90% of global dredging contracts are currently won by one of four Belgian and Dutch dredging companies Jan De Nul, Van Oord, Boskalis, and DEME https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Dredge_Act_of_1906 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Dredge_Act_of_1906
- tobylane 4y ago
  That means only 10% of worldwide dredging is done in China and US combined, which surprises me. I wonder how much of the total is maintenance versus digging to a certain depth for the first time.
  - ggm 4y ago
    The take away would be there is a lot of the "rest of the world" depending on silty River mouths. China and the US depend on a small number of massive ports and the RoW depends on lots and lots of silty ports.
- Smaug123 4y ago
  (The OP notes very early on that that Wikipedia page came into existence four days ago because of the investigations that led to the article.)
hedora 4y ago
The argument focuses on US made dredges being uncompetitive and dirty (makes sense), but then the proposed changes to the law would prevent the EPA from performing environmental reviews!
- skissane 4y ago
  My understanding is that, currently, both the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) and the EPA share jurisdiction over US federal environmental reviews for dredging. (I think other agencies may play some role in that process too, such as NOAA Fisheries.) Senator Mike Lee's "DEEP Act" proposal would remove the EPA's jurisdiction, but USACE would still be legally required to perform an environmental review. So it is not completely removing federal environmental reviews for dredging projects, just removing (or reducing) one federal regulatory agency's role in them. That does seem likely to reduce bureaucracy, with likely reductions in project approval costs and potential speed-ups in environmental approval timelines. Would it have an environmental cost? I don't know. I suppose, it is possible (maybe) that USACE is more lenient than the EPA, and hence giving USACE exclusive federal environmental jurisdiction would result in more lenient environmental protection conditions and mitigations for dredging projects, resulting in greater environmental harm overall. But I don't know if that is actually true. And even if it is actually true, I'm not sure how big the quantum of additional environmental harm is going to be, or even how one could go about estimating that.
nnx 4y ago
This is once again a very good example of why laws/regulations should always have a sunset clause.
Maursault 4y ago
Unfortunately, even if the Dredge Act is repealed and everything got dredged, Climate Change will raise sea levels and change the course of rivers, probably making the investment in dredging worse than a wash. I apologize in advance for this rant. My alternative idea is going to be unpopular. How about we take what we've figured our about what's causing Climate Change, where all those things actually are, and stop it all immediately, by force if necessary, and just deal with the interruption in luxury. And then we immediately figure out another way for all the things. And make the uber rich pay for it all. I mean... would it take more than 10 years to get back to where we were without killing the planet and everything on it? I could go 10 years without electricity, nearly everybody could, but it wouldn't even be remotely like that, we'd just have a lot less power for a while. Really, I feel like if the air was right now actually smokey everywhere from pollution from burning bunker fuel, and temperatures were insane, shippers would still want to dredge because they are losing money. I think the author has great points, and I like his style, I just don't give a damn about... Goddamn ships. Oh, those poor shipping companies, and those poor poor consumers.
- whb07 4y ago
  Makes you wonder why the elites who push climate change and rising sea levels are all buying premium beach front properties around the world! I’m still waiting for the earth to freeze over according to the “agreed science” from the 1970s-80s.
  - Maursault 4y ago
    > I’m still waiting for the earth to freeze over according to the “agreed science” from the 1970s-80s. I think that occurs immediately after fresh water dilutes the oceans and shuts down the Thermohaline circulation. Europe freezes, then everything else freezes. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_meridional_overturning_circulation#Shutdown_of_the_thermohaline_circulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_meridional_overturnin...
- nivenkos 4y ago
  The uber rich decide the laws and control the government and security forces though so that will never happen. Instead you end up with hypocritical rules against normal people like in the lockdowns where you could still travel abroad if owned multiple houses, etc. - like now how the EU has introduced fuel duty on airlines, but not on private jets. And reducing supply lines leads to supply-side inflation like we're seeing in Europe now - 10+% inflation, interest rates going up, possible rationing coming in winter, etc. - no-one wants that. I'd just try not to worry about it, we can't change anything anyway. Just focus on what you can do yourself, like trying to work remotely to buy a house in a less affected area, etc.
pogobop 4y ago
Haha no. The international market is not a competitive market. It’s a syndicate, funded by zero percent loans of countries that accept US Aid. Also that syndicate does not follow US laws, such as the definition of fraud and bribery. It’s no different from the chip industry, if we let foreign competitors it will lower the cost of domestic work. they’d price the US out of business. Then they’d have the ability to control the rate of US port expansion or even function (Natl Sec. issue). Any study of the Panama Canal work will show this. We cannot chase this illusive low cost solution, we need a holistic approach that pays a living local wage to run a functioning society.
phkahler 4y ago
Sand is becoming scarce these days. I would say no to allowing foreign owned vessels from dredging here. Its notable that lobbyists want to allow it. That article also says a larger dredge is being built in the US, though not AS large as the foreign ones. TFA is probably just part of the campaign.
stonemetal 4y ago
If he actually did any research how could he get it that wrong? Nothing about being built in America, just that the owner and charterer must be Americans, the actual operating crew can be whoever. The coastwise endorsement further defines American ownership with if the owner is a corporation then "must be American" means incorporated in US's legal jurisdiction and voting majority of the board is US citizens. The dredge act (as linked to by the author) is short enough I will quote it here[1]: §55109. Dredging (a) In General.-Except as provided in subsection (b), a vessel may engage in dredging in the navigable waters of the United States only if- (1) the vessel is wholly owned by citizens of the United States for purposes of engaging in the coastwise trade; (2) the charterer, if any, is a citizen of the United States for purposes of engaging in the coastwise trade; and (3) the vessel has been issued a certificate of documentation with a coastwise endorsement under chapter 121 of this title or is exempt from documentation but would otherwise be eligible for such a certificate and endorsement. (b) Dredging of Gold in Alaska.-A documented vessel with a registry endorsement may engage in the dredging of gold in Alaska. (c) Penalty.-If a vessel is operated in knowing violation of this section, the vessel and its equipment are liable to seizure by and forfeiture to the United States Government. [1]:https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim-title46-section55109&num=0&edition=prelim https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim...
- barry-cotter 4y ago
  > Section 883 also requires that the vessel be built in and documented under the laws of the United States. Those latter two requirements are covered by subsection (a)(3). Note that the build requirement is a requirement for a coastwise endorsement. Taken from the page you linked. Emphasis not in original but you’re still wrong.
jonstewart 4y ago
As a bit of a tangent, the Jones Act also has a very negative impact on Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico is an incredible US asset that’s undermined by parochial special interests. https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/policy-and-politics/2017/9/27/16373484/jones-act-puerto-rico https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/policy-and-politics/2017/9/...
- Proven 4y ago
frankharv 4y ago
>>>>Dredging is a bottleneck to the expansion and maintenance of ports,<<<< Nowhere in the article does he prove this. It is just a guess from somebody who has ZERO marine experience. He thinks he can change the world. Please work in a field before posting stupid opinions.
- skybrian 4y ago
  You don't have to have worked in a field to write about it, though it helps. A good reporter would talk to some people who worked in the field to get their opinions. This article is more confident than seems warranted, but that's more tone than substance. It does seem to be based on a lot of reading, which isn't a bad way to get started at learning about new things. (Talking excessively confidently about things you just learned something about is very common on the social media. It's kind of the house style.)
  - frankharv 4y ago
    Don't get me wrong. The Jones Act is terrible. It has nothing to do with 'Labor Costs'. Jones Act is used very liberally in lawsuits to protect ship owners against worker injury. Dredging is not a bottleneck. Money is. You can't throw a bigger dredge at the problem. Dredges rotate between contracts. Some cities might need deeper channels other might want a wider beach. Sand shifts on the sea floor. It is highly unpredictable. Mother nature will put sand where she wants. Most people have no idea how abrasive sand is. Imagine sandblasting the inside of your dredge pump while its running. That is what happens. The thing is most dredge pumps have an impeller casing of 8 foot diameter. It is a huge pump on the scale of hydroelectric pumps. But it pumps a slurry of sand. Very maintenance intensive even with hardfacing interior surfaces..
    - vba616 4y ago
      >Most people have no idea how abrasive sand is. Imagine sandblasting... Sorry, I can't imagine sandblasting because I have no idea how abrasive sand is.
nikanj 4y ago
Tragedy of the commons, the lobbying edition: Everyone pays a little more, so that a small group can enjoy a nicer life. This is a recurring pattern, and once you start paying attention, you see it everywhere. Everyone pays more for goods, so that longshoremen can enjoy union rates. Everyone commutes 10 minutes more, so that the lucky few get to live in a non-densified neighborhood next to downtown core.
MR4D 4y ago
> “Remove EPA’s enforcement and oversight over the Section 404 permitting process under the NWP“ I don’t ever see that happening unless Republicans control both houses of Congress and the Presidency. This alone tends to make the rest of the article irrelevant. Not that it’s wrong, just that this is a major blocker that turns the rest of the discussion into a thought experiment instead of an action plan.

106 points by barry-cotter 5y ago

> if I had to pick one policy that was the Platonic ideal of stupid, the thing that has almost zero upside and also has the best ratio of 'amount of damage this is doing to America’ versus ‘reasons why we can’t stop being idiots about this’ there is (so far) a clear winner. > We must repeal the Foreign Dredge Act of 1906. It says, to paraphrase, no underwater digging - to repair ports, or build bigger ones, or fix waterways - unless the boat doing the digging was built in the US, and is owned and operated by Americans. … > The direct cost savings (as in, if we did the current set of jobs cheaper and faster) depends on the current size of the market. If we take the 5% at face value and the 11 billion worldwide size estimate here, and assume roughly 50% cost savings, we get $250 million/year. At a 5% discount rate we can value that at about $5 billion, plus the benefits of getting projects done faster, and doing more projects. Already this seems to be approaching the 1000:1 ratio where economic interventions make sense, but the real benefits are in what you do with the jobs you wouldn’t have otherwise done. > If the estimate of 1.6 million jobs checks out, we are already talking about single digit costs per job created, which should already compare favorably with third-world interventions even without any of the additional indirect benefits, of which there are many. The impact on inflation could be substantial even within a few years.

bombcar 4y ago

Sounds like the Army Corps of Engineers should get themselves a big dredger.

frankharv 4y ago
Army Corps had a whole fleet of dredges. Then politics. Now they have just a few. It was deliberately farmed out to private companies. On the East Coast We keep the dredge McFarland for the crucial work. That is it.. I hear the Mississippi River has quite a few still.

DantesKite 4y ago

What's remarkable to me that the Wikipedia page for such an impactful law wasn't created until 3 days ago. It'll be pretty cool if an online group of observant people manage to change this law.

HarryHirsch 4y ago
Evidently the Wikipedia entry is part of a lobbying effort, and it's working.

8note 4y ago

It's weird that this and the Jones act don't come under NAFTA

barry-cotter 4y ago
It’s not like the US was dealing with anything resembling equals in setting up NAFTA. Canada and Mexico had much more to gain than the US so they had very little negotiating leverage.
- ggm 4y ago
  Most Favoured Nation status should apply. Or what's called the BOOT: better off overall test. Exclusion of the US from the AsiaPac trade round made everyone else better off! The US basically screws everyone: no Australian US trade agreement in recent history has been BOOT for Australia, US states also apply random rules which nullify much Australian trade advantages: BHP was blocked from building some minerals processing in California IIRC. A rather anti US subtext in "love actually" is based on populist common belief: in trade negotiations cross administration the US is a 900lb gorilla bully. The push back by farming lobbies in the UK to US chicken is an unusual example of holding ground. Consumer sentiment lined-up for once. Undoubtedly ammonia rinsed chicken would be cheaper.
  - barry-cotter 4y ago
    Any agreement that does not make the parties better off overall is rejected because it is quite literally worse than nothing. That an agreement does not split gains equally between participants because they don’t have equal leverage in no way means that trade agreements freely entered into make the participants worse off.
    - ggm 4y ago
      The lived experience for most Australian trading is that bilats and multilats with the US are net negative. You have to take a view that things are only better if cheaper, even if you drive your own food security to the floor. It destroyed the Australian car parts sector, and ultimately Ford and GMH left Australia.

akgoel 4y ago

The Odd Lots podcast from Bloomberg just did an episode on the Foreign Dredge Act. As a Houstonian, I was shocked to learn that the Port of Houston is being hobbled by our inability to dredge properly, limiting container vessels to once a week, and slowing down oil tanker shipments. There is currently only one narrow lane that is dredged, and opening a second lane would improve traffic flow quadratically.

serf 4y ago

given the terrible dangers to aquatic ecosystems associated with dredging, I don't know if citing the feet per hour is going to win a lot of fans to the cause -- which is then further compounded by this defense > That doesn’t rule out a position of roughly ‘yes this is a no-good-very-bad way of limiting how much we dredge but it does limit it and that is what matters.’ > I don’t know how to engage with that perspective as anything but opposition to civilization. If you don’t think we should maintain or create ports, make it possible to navigate rivers or free ships that get stuck - which are the primary reasons people dredge - then that’s not compatible with having a technological civilization. Perhaps there are other ways to work around that and still have a technological civilization, but they are orders of magnitude worse in terms of their consequences for the Earth. I'm of the opinion that we should learn to use our sprawling ports in the United States more efficiently rather than stacking more inefficient ports[0] across all of our coast -- especially given the tremendous ecological cost of what we already have -- and apparently that stance is defined by the author as 'opposition to civilization' and not even worthy of rebuttal. Hard disagree. Look around the U.S. ports and identify the bottlenecks mentioned; it's rarely marine-space related -- it's almost entirely logistical or occupational related -- bigger ports will require more employees that don't even exist in large enough quantity now to fill the roles needed even today -- and this is aside from the additional employees needed for the larger dredging operations. "jobs created" means precisely zero in skilled trades without a captive and waiting audience -- these people will need to be trained and placed -- it can't just be spun from nothing over-night. (I have lived in Wilmington, the number one port in the U.S. in commerce value) tl;dr : let's fix ports rather than making more broken ports and ruining our seas. [0]: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/california-ports-key-us-supply-chain-among-worlds-least-efficient-2021-10-20/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/california-ports-key-us-sup...

Animats 4y ago

It turned out that the guy with the Youtube video complaining that the US didn't have a dredge big enough for the job had calculated wrong. Donjon-Smit, out of Houston TX, brought in dredges and cranes, unloaded about 500 containers in a few days, did enough dredging to free up the now-lightened ship, and towed it out. The Ever Forward spent a few days in Baltimore being unloaded and repaired, and then went on to Norfolk, then New York, and is now waiting to transit the Panama Canal. The US doesn't have huge dredging capacity because it has good deepwater ports. Compare the Port of Shanghai, where 32 km of bridges, artificial islands, and extensive dredging were needed just to get to deep water.

barry-cotter 4y ago
> The US doesn't have huge dredging capacity because it has good deepwater ports. I suggest reading the article. Dredging the Mississippi five inches deeper would increase profits of the soybean industry alone by over $2 billion a year, IIRC. There’s a lot more than soybeans that travels on the Mississippi and reducing carrying costs would make all kinds of freight cheaper.
- Animats 4y ago
  Five feet deeper.[1] The big holdup on that was a deal which exempted Louisiana from the usual requirement that the state pay half the cost. Now, the Federal government is paying three-quarters of the cost. There's a big barge lobby. Barges don't pay for US waterway use. There's a tax on fuel, but it pays maybe 10% of the cost of maintaining waterways. [1] https://garretgraves.house.gov/media-center/in-the-news/dredging-mississippi-river-50-feet-clears-corps-approval-hurdle https://garretgraves.house.gov/media-center/in-the-news/dred...
  - barry-cotter 4y ago
    Thank you for the correction. Re:barges and paying for infrastructure. Who cares? User pays is nice in principle but if there are massive positive externalities of doing something the government should do it. That’s what taxes and the idea of the public good are for. The benefits of cheaper transport do not accrue mostly to barge companies.

aaron695 4y ago

pyuser583 4y ago

I live near a system of lakes, connected by locks and rivers. A few years ago there was strong rain, and they started to flood. The city usually opens a lock, to let a larger lake drain into a smaller lake. Only, there was so much sediment, it clogged up the lock! Now the city needs to spend 10s of millions on dollars to drudge the lakes.

bombcar 4y ago

Theory: a huge dredge would save $500 million in a contract. Fact: a huge dredge ship might cost $250-300 million or more. Problem: then buying one to do the project and then throwing it away would save money. But this isn’t being done. I have my suspicions about how much money would actively be saved, and note a bunch of “remove any and all safeguards”.

barry-cotter 4y ago
> Problem: then buying one to do the project and then throwing it away would save money. But this isn’t being done. I suggest reading the article. Under the Act all US dredges must be built in the US. A US entity buying one doesn’t make using it in the US legal.
- bombcar 4y ago
  So build one in the US. Unless the argument is such as ship is literally impossible to build in the US, the numbers don’t add up. If the savings would really be so high someone would do it. I suspect that even with a max size dredger the savings would be minimal, if any.
  - bobthepanda 4y ago
    The cost of building a dredge also involves the cost of labor hours required to build it. American labor hours are more expensive. You can’t just import the Belgian and Dutch workers building the world class dredges at their salaries for the purpose of supplanting domestic workers.
    - rtpg 4y ago
      I do agree that labor hours can be costly, but if we're looking at Western Europe as a competitor to America, then surely we're looking at a situation where labor costs should be lower? Surely? Like Belgian and Dutch workers aren't going to be cheap either, right?

haunter 4y ago

>90% of global dredging contracts are currently won by one of four Belgian and Dutch dredging companies Jan De Nul, Van Oord, Boskalis, and DEME https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Dredge_Act_of_1906 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Dredge_Act_of_1906

tobylane 4y ago
That means only 10% of worldwide dredging is done in China and US combined, which surprises me. I wonder how much of the total is maintenance versus digging to a certain depth for the first time.
- ggm 4y ago
  The take away would be there is a lot of the "rest of the world" depending on silty River mouths. China and the US depend on a small number of massive ports and the RoW depends on lots and lots of silty ports.
Smaug123 4y ago
(The OP notes very early on that that Wikipedia page came into existence four days ago because of the investigations that led to the article.)

hedora 4y ago

The argument focuses on US made dredges being uncompetitive and dirty (makes sense), but then the proposed changes to the law would prevent the EPA from performing environmental reviews!

skissane 4y ago
My understanding is that, currently, both the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) and the EPA share jurisdiction over US federal environmental reviews for dredging. (I think other agencies may play some role in that process too, such as NOAA Fisheries.) Senator Mike Lee's "DEEP Act" proposal would remove the EPA's jurisdiction, but USACE would still be legally required to perform an environmental review. So it is not completely removing federal environmental reviews for dredging projects, just removing (or reducing) one federal regulatory agency's role in them. That does seem likely to reduce bureaucracy, with likely reductions in project approval costs and potential speed-ups in environmental approval timelines. Would it have an environmental cost? I don't know. I suppose, it is possible (maybe) that USACE is more lenient than the EPA, and hence giving USACE exclusive federal environmental jurisdiction would result in more lenient environmental protection conditions and mitigations for dredging projects, resulting in greater environmental harm overall. But I don't know if that is actually true. And even if it is actually true, I'm not sure how big the quantum of additional environmental harm is going to be, or even how one could go about estimating that.

nnx 4y ago

This is once again a very good example of why laws/regulations should always have a sunset clause.

Maursault 4y ago

Unfortunately, even if the Dredge Act is repealed and everything got dredged, Climate Change will raise sea levels and change the course of rivers, probably making the investment in dredging worse than a wash. I apologize in advance for this rant. My alternative idea is going to be unpopular. How about we take what we've figured our about what's causing Climate Change, where all those things actually are, and stop it all immediately, by force if necessary, and just deal with the interruption in luxury. And then we immediately figure out another way for all the things. And make the uber rich pay for it all. I mean... would it take more than 10 years to get back to where we were without killing the planet and everything on it? I could go 10 years without electricity, nearly everybody could, but it wouldn't even be remotely like that, we'd just have a lot less power for a while. Really, I feel like if the air was right now actually smokey everywhere from pollution from burning bunker fuel, and temperatures were insane, shippers would still want to dredge because they are losing money. I think the author has great points, and I like his style, I just don't give a damn about... Goddamn ships. Oh, those poor shipping companies, and those poor poor consumers.

whb07 4y ago
Makes you wonder why the elites who push climate change and rising sea levels are all buying premium beach front properties around the world! I’m still waiting for the earth to freeze over according to the “agreed science” from the 1970s-80s.
- Maursault 4y ago
  > I’m still waiting for the earth to freeze over according to the “agreed science” from the 1970s-80s. I think that occurs immediately after fresh water dilutes the oceans and shuts down the Thermohaline circulation. Europe freezes, then everything else freezes. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_meridional_overturning_circulation#Shutdown_of_the_thermohaline_circulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_meridional_overturnin...
nivenkos 4y ago
The uber rich decide the laws and control the government and security forces though so that will never happen. Instead you end up with hypocritical rules against normal people like in the lockdowns where you could still travel abroad if owned multiple houses, etc. - like now how the EU has introduced fuel duty on airlines, but not on private jets. And reducing supply lines leads to supply-side inflation like we're seeing in Europe now - 10+% inflation, interest rates going up, possible rationing coming in winter, etc. - no-one wants that. I'd just try not to worry about it, we can't change anything anyway. Just focus on what you can do yourself, like trying to work remotely to buy a house in a less affected area, etc.

pogobop 4y ago

Haha no. The international market is not a competitive market. It’s a syndicate, funded by zero percent loans of countries that accept US Aid. Also that syndicate does not follow US laws, such as the definition of fraud and bribery. It’s no different from the chip industry, if we let foreign competitors it will lower the cost of domestic work. they’d price the US out of business. Then they’d have the ability to control the rate of US port expansion or even function (Natl Sec. issue). Any study of the Panama Canal work will show this. We cannot chase this illusive low cost solution, we need a holistic approach that pays a living local wage to run a functioning society.

phkahler 4y ago

Sand is becoming scarce these days. I would say no to allowing foreign owned vessels from dredging here. Its notable that lobbyists want to allow it. That article also says a larger dredge is being built in the US, though not AS large as the foreign ones. TFA is probably just part of the campaign.

stonemetal 4y ago

If he actually did any research how could he get it that wrong? Nothing about being built in America, just that the owner and charterer must be Americans, the actual operating crew can be whoever. The coastwise endorsement further defines American ownership with if the owner is a corporation then "must be American" means incorporated in US's legal jurisdiction and voting majority of the board is US citizens. The dredge act (as linked to by the author) is short enough I will quote it here[1]: §55109. Dredging (a) In General.-Except as provided in subsection (b), a vessel may engage in dredging in the navigable waters of the United States only if- (1) the vessel is wholly owned by citizens of the United States for purposes of engaging in the coastwise trade; (2) the charterer, if any, is a citizen of the United States for purposes of engaging in the coastwise trade; and (3) the vessel has been issued a certificate of documentation with a coastwise endorsement under chapter 121 of this title or is exempt from documentation but would otherwise be eligible for such a certificate and endorsement. (b) Dredging of Gold in Alaska.-A documented vessel with a registry endorsement may engage in the dredging of gold in Alaska. (c) Penalty.-If a vessel is operated in knowing violation of this section, the vessel and its equipment are liable to seizure by and forfeiture to the United States Government. [1]:https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim-title46-section55109&num=0&edition=prelim https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim...

barry-cotter 4y ago
> Section 883 also requires that the vessel be built in and documented under the laws of the United States. Those latter two requirements are covered by subsection (a)(3). Note that the build requirement is a requirement for a coastwise endorsement. Taken from the page you linked. Emphasis not in original but you’re still wrong.

jonstewart 4y ago

As a bit of a tangent, the Jones Act also has a very negative impact on Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico is an incredible US asset that’s undermined by parochial special interests. https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/policy-and-politics/2017/9/27/16373484/jones-act-puerto-rico https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/policy-and-politics/2017/9/...

Proven 4y ago

frankharv 4y ago

>>>>Dredging is a bottleneck to the expansion and maintenance of ports,<<<< Nowhere in the article does he prove this. It is just a guess from somebody who has ZERO marine experience. He thinks he can change the world. Please work in a field before posting stupid opinions.

skybrian 4y ago
You don't have to have worked in a field to write about it, though it helps. A good reporter would talk to some people who worked in the field to get their opinions. This article is more confident than seems warranted, but that's more tone than substance. It does seem to be based on a lot of reading, which isn't a bad way to get started at learning about new things. (Talking excessively confidently about things you just learned something about is very common on the social media. It's kind of the house style.)
- frankharv 4y ago
  Don't get me wrong. The Jones Act is terrible. It has nothing to do with 'Labor Costs'. Jones Act is used very liberally in lawsuits to protect ship owners against worker injury. Dredging is not a bottleneck. Money is. You can't throw a bigger dredge at the problem. Dredges rotate between contracts. Some cities might need deeper channels other might want a wider beach. Sand shifts on the sea floor. It is highly unpredictable. Mother nature will put sand where she wants. Most people have no idea how abrasive sand is. Imagine sandblasting the inside of your dredge pump while its running. That is what happens. The thing is most dredge pumps have an impeller casing of 8 foot diameter. It is a huge pump on the scale of hydroelectric pumps. But it pumps a slurry of sand. Very maintenance intensive even with hardfacing interior surfaces..
  - vba616 4y ago
    >Most people have no idea how abrasive sand is. Imagine sandblasting... Sorry, I can't imagine sandblasting because I have no idea how abrasive sand is.

nikanj 4y ago

Tragedy of the commons, the lobbying edition: Everyone pays a little more, so that a small group can enjoy a nicer life. This is a recurring pattern, and once you start paying attention, you see it everywhere. Everyone pays more for goods, so that longshoremen can enjoy union rates. Everyone commutes 10 minutes more, so that the lucky few get to live in a non-densified neighborhood next to downtown core.

MR4D 4y ago

> “Remove EPA’s enforcement and oversight over the Section 404 permitting process under the NWP“ I don’t ever see that happening unless Republicans control both houses of Congress and the Presidency. This alone tends to make the rest of the article irrelevant. Not that it’s wrong, just that this is a major blocker that turns the rest of the discussion into a thought experiment instead of an action plan.