MSU Paducah Hosts Industry Day

For the first time in six years, the Coast Guard’s Marine Safety Unit Paducah hosted an industry day for maritime businesses October 18.

About 50 people attended the event, held at the Seamen’s Church Institute’s Center for Maritime Education in Paducah. It included an overview of waterways conditions as well as presentations on low water trends, marine casualties, merchant mariner credentialing, cybersecurity and more.

MSU Paducah Commander Shehu Bello and Ohio Valley Sector Commander Heather Mattern welcomed the group.

“We’re so excited to re-commence this wonderful forum,” Bello said, citing the importance of face-to-face meetings that foster discussion, permit questions and allow for clearer communication.

Mattern took the opportunity to speak specifically about issues at Lower Mississippi Mile 920, near Hickman, Ky., where multiple groundings have taken place recently.

“That is something I’m going to be working directly with leadership in the Army Corps to figure out what is the path forward and how,” she said.

Mattern said she is also working with the Corps of Engineers on how to improve the safety of the area around McAlpine Locks and Dam, near Louisville, Ky., where barge breakaways occurred in both March 2023 and March of this year during high-water periods.

“We want to do everything we can do to safeguard that important infrastructure,” Mattern said.

She asked industry to continue to communicate problem areas and let the Coast Guard know about buoys that have been run over.

“We’re continuing to keep our cutters out and marking the channel the best we can,” Mattern said.

Low-Water Trends

Sarah Girdner, water control section chief for the Memphis Engineer District, said the low water of 2022, 2023 and again this year have been challenging. For most areas, 2023 set set low-water records, with this year the second worst and 2022 the third worst, although the impacts have not been as bad as in 2022 because of lessons learned and improvements in communication between industry and government groups.

“We have broken low-stage records at almost every single mainstem Mississippi River stream gage location that we have over the past three years,” she said.

The low-water conditions have been so severe that there have been times when sensors along the Mississippi in the Memphis District were no longer in the water and had to be relocated.

“We’re essentially chasing the water down with this event to ensure that we’re collecting data so that the weather service can still produce forecasts and that we have the information you need to be able to make operational decisions,” she said.

Currently, Girdner said, flows from the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers have added to the flow of the Lower Mississippi River, despite drought in the Upper Mississippi basin.

However, she said, “If this drought persists, if we continue to have no rainfall, conditions could worsen.”

Girdner said she is often asked how common it is to have so many low-water seasons in a short period, so she took a look at decades of past data to see how many times the gage at Cairo, Ill., the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers, has dipped below 10 feet.

“We’ve had between two and five events every decade,” she said. “However, the current event and the past two we have just gone through are certainly more extreme.”

In 2022, rapid fluctuations took place in many areas, with the Cairo gage seeing 4-foot swings at times, Girdner said. In 2023, a memorandum of understanding between the Corps of Engineers and the Tennessee Valley Authority was signed to try to address and mitigate issues on the Lower Mississippi River during low water as well as to improve river stage forecasting. When the Cairo gage is forecast to dip below 10 feet, all the involved parties now begin participating in daily calls to coordinate releases at locks and dams, she said.

Conditions triggered that MOU to go into effect October 18, with flows from where Barkley and Kentucky dams held their lakes above normal pool stages being released in a coordinated way to supplement flows downstream.

“That is the only thing that’s keeping Cairo above 8 [feet] for the next week because there is no rain in the forecast, and over the next 16 days there is no rain in the forecast, and then stages are going to immediately start dropping off,” Girdner said.

Girdner said she “doesn’t have a Magic 8 ball” to know whether to expect a fourth low-water event next year, but she does have data on climate trends across the Mississippi Basin. Those trends show that, while annual precipitation over the past 20 years has increased, the distribution is changing, with more days both of no precipitation and also more of extreme precipitation.

“We’re going to see more frequent droughts, and we’re going to see more frequent floods,” Girdner said.

Overall, she said, average temperatures can be expected to increase, and “flash droughts” are expected to become more common.

Marine Casualties

Stephen Thompson, senior investigative officer of MSU Paducah, provided an update on marine casualty reporting.

From January 1 through October 1, the Eights Coast Guard District received reports of 1,603 marine casualties, he said. Of those, 108 were allisions, including 15 collisions; 11 were fires; 167 were groundings; and 89 events involved loss of propulsion or steering. There were four fatalities and 53 injuries.

MSU Paducah investigated 20 groundings; three fires; 17 allisions; 11 loss of propulsion/loss of steering events; and three reported injuries during the same period, Thompson said. While one person reported to be swimming off a boat died, it was not considered a reportable marine casualty as the person was not on a boat that was underway, Thompson said.

Credentialing

Anne Seither, deputy director of the National Maritime Center (NMC), gave updates on credentialing, with her key message being to apply at least 90 days in advance for a credential renewal or a medical certificate.

“There’s no disadvantage for applying eight months in advance [for a straight renewal, not an upgrade],” she said, adding that new credentials would be dated to begin after the current credential ends unless the mariner directs the NMC not to do so.

Merchant mariner credential booklets will be phased out over the next five years, she said. Marine Safety Information Bulletin (MSIB) 06-23, which allows mariners to operate once their credential is listed as “approved to print,” remains in effect. The MSIB was put into place because of frequent printer problems, she said, leading the NMC to switch to a new system.

John Hoesli, chief of the regional exam center in St. Louis, clarified that mariners still must have a valid medical certificate in hand even if their application is “approved to print,” since the MSIB did not extend to medical certificates.

Last month, a verification scan code was added to all credentials. A customer service chatbot has also been added to the NMC website to handle common questions.

Moving forward, the NMC plans to revise its policy to reject any incomplete applications, which will force those applicants to start the process again. The change is because more than 50 percent of applications received are complete, and those with complete applications are having to wait behind those who have incomplete ones before they can be processed, Seither said. She urged mariners to use available online checklists before submitting applications.

Each spring, the NMC sees an increase in applications, and it was “absolutely slammed” in 2024, Seither said.

“This was the highest spring surge we’ve seen in the last eight years with these,” she said.

Seither also implored those who are uncertain if the NMC received their credentials not to send a duplicate.

“If you’re concerned we didn’t get your email, call us,” she said.

She noted that 10,668 applications were in NMC control with an overall processing time of 70.2 days and another 3,602 applications awaiting information. More than 3,200 that were approved to test were not included in that overall figure. In an effort to reduce waiting time to 30 days or less, the NMC has brought on two new contractors and has approved overtime for employees, Seither said.

She added that delays also continue for medical certificates.

“Back in June, we had about 10,000 emails we had not opened,” Seither said.

That number is now down to about 1,500, she said, which represents about a six-week backlog. Once an application is entered into the system, the average processing time is 7.77 days, she said.

Application status may be checked at homeport.uscg.mil/mmcstatus. Questions should be routed to iasknmc@uscg.mil or 1-888-IASKNMC (427-5662) between 8 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. Eastern time. Applications should be sent to mmcapplication@uscg.mil. Regional exam offices also have been directed to forward applications to that address now, Hoesli said. He added that within the next six to eight months, it is likely that pay.gov will be the only way to submit payments as other methods are expected to be discontinued.

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Featured photo caption: Coast Guard Sector Ohio Valley Commander Heather Mattern presents Josef Vlach (left), vice president of compliance and emergency management with James Marine, with a coin in appreciation for his help with the Marine Safety Unit Paducah Industry Day on October 18. (Photo by Shelley Byrne)