Short- Sea Shipping
I like this idea. I'm surprised we're not already doing it.
posted by Fred Mangels @ 10:10 AM
7 comments
Fred's Humboldt Blog
I'm a Libertarian living in Humboldt County, CA. I've lived here in Eureka since 1973 and joined the Libertarian Party in 1992. This blog will mostly focus on local political issues, but I may stray into state and national issues as well, when I can't help myself. Please post your comments by clicking on the "comments" link at the bottom of each post. Although I do moderate comments, you need not be a registered user to post them.
Friday, November 21, 2008
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7 Comments:
Tugs have been hauling fuel up here from the Bay area for years. Ditto for logs from Canada. Using tugs & barges for hauling other products in (& out?) would require some serious thought. Somebody would have to stop writing grant requests and actually do something productive.
I mentioned on Heraldette's blog (and here some time ago) that most of our gasoline in Humboldt already comes in here by barge, although someone mentioned that Costco trucks in their gas.
Costco and Patriot, Blue Lake Casino all truck their gas in and that is why it is cheaper.
Costco today $1.99 a gallon - Shell $2.39 - Blue Lake Casino on Thursday $2.29.
The short sea shipping could work here but so many people are so against the next part with rail, etc that they see the forest for the trees.
The barging, etc. may be the only shipping we ever see but it does bring jobs to the harbor and Humboldt. I don't see anything wrong with this idea.
"Costco and Patriot, Blue Lake Casino all truck their gas in and that is why it is cheaper.".
According to the NCJ article, shipping by barge is much cheaper, at least as far as fuel used per ton.
I was under the impression that the reason for Eureka's higher than normal gas prices- Renner Petroleum and the rest- was because Renner buys his gas from a certain refinery that charges more. That's just what I heard from a couple different sources.
I suggested the Sea Train idea back in May and think somebody in the future is going to inevitably do it because of the high risk of single container shipping wrecks and their huge environmental and financial impacts. Sea Trains with ocean-going tugs pulling ocean-going barges full of containers or whatever so that if one does spring a leak it can be far more readily contained. Also, the Sea Train configuration can ride out major storms far better than a single ship because the linkage holds the barges together through crests and troughs of storm waves. And at port, harbor tugs can pull in individual barges one at a time and if set up right with ramps, the barges can be offloaded directly into trucks with forklifts instead of needing those god-ugly cranes that spoil the skyline of every major port.
The bay should be used only for fishing and recreation, such as kayaking, rowing and etc. Anything else is too environmentally destructive. We don't need a shipping port on our bay. It's already polluted enough.
Oh, yes, exactly what politically correct natives said when practically every port in the world was constructed, only they didn't have Baykeeper to throw lawsuits at the uppity people wanting to develop their civilizations utterly dependent on port development. Yes, only use OUR BAY for recreation where we can kayak and row our boats fabricated in the Big Cities with their ports developed so that immigrants coming into Humboldt County have money and supplies to recreate on their private Bay.
As long as world population continues to grow exponentially, the more of everything is going to be required and oddly enough, the materially wealthier the societies become, created by successful economies fully dependent on developed ports, the lower their birth-rates become.
If you want to continue for Humboldt citizens to live off the largess of other cities with their developed ports, ala government funded jobs and pot growing, let's for sure keep our port undeveloped and a..a..a..what??? In 2008 it is nowhere near what Humboldt Bay looked like in 1850 when boats passed it by because it was choked full of vegetation and mud, very good for local mud environment-dependent species but terrible for our human species unless you have a kayak, a government-funded job, and disposable incomes, all of which are totally dependent on the largess of successfully port-developed cities.
Our real challenge is how to make our Bay both economically viable and a bountiful habitat for fish, which I might remind everyone, cannot swim through mud.
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