New York presses NOAA to fund port gauge systems

New York presses NOAA to fund port gauge systems Members of the New York and New Jersey port community are leading an effort to get the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to come up with permanent funding for the operations and maintenance of a network of tide gauges and other sensors deployed around the harbor.
   Andy McGovern, a Sandy Hook pilot who is chairman of the Harbor Safety, Navigation and Operations Committee for the Port of New York-New Jersey, traveled last month to Washington to urge the federal agency to include funding for the upkeep of the Physical Oceanographic Real-Time System (PORTS) in New York and a dozen other harbors around the country.
   For the past three years, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey has supplied $195,000 per year for maintenance of sensors in the system, and in past years agencies such as the New Jersey Department of Transportation have also provided funds.
   But McGovern and others, such as Edward J. Kelley, executive director of the Maritime Association of the Port of New York and New Jersey, say that a permanent funding solution should be found.
   Darren Wright, program manager for PORTS at NOAA, said that when the systems were designed in the 1990s they were envisioned as a “partnership program where the government is responsible for project management, data dissemination, data collection infrastructure and 24-hour/seven-day-a-week quality control of the data, and the partner is responsible for the purchase of the equipment and the operation and maintenance costs each year.”
   Back in 2000-2001, he said a group of which New York was part, managed to get language in a bill so that PORTS is authorized for full funding, meaning the government would pay for operations and maintenance costs.
   “But we have never been appropriated that amount.” he said.
   Wright notes that, to date, New York has been able to come up with money for the system. “But it has been a struggle for them. They have had different people step up to the plate. They have had trouble getting steady funding. Delaware River ports had a similar issue with funding,” he said.
   McGovern and Richard Larrabee, director of the port authority's port commerce department, sit on NOAA’s Hydrographic Services Review Panel, which McGovern said also supports funding for maintenance of the system.
   He said he has raised the issue directly with NOAA Administrator Conrad C. Lautenbacher.
   It isn’t just that Congress and the president aren’t funding the program, McGovern said. The agency “never asks for the appropriation.”
   The New York system has sensors at seven locations around the port — Sandy Hook, the Verrazano Narrows, Bergen Point, Bayonne Bridge, Robbins Reef, The Battery at the tip of Manhattan, and Kings Point where the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy is located.
   They include standard sorts of meteorological instruments to measure wind speed and direction, barometric pressure and temperature as well as gauges to measure water levels, salinity, temperature and three sorts of current meters that can either provide a side mounted look at water velocity at a particular depth or surface or bottom mounted gauges that give a current profile from channel bottom to surface.
   New York also has an air gap sensor at the bottom of the Bayonne Bridge that measures the distance from the bottom of the bridge to the surface of the water. Concern about “air draft” beneath bridges has been a growing concern in many ports around the world, particularly in New York where ships bound for the container terminals in Port Newark-Elizabeth and at Howland Hook must pass below the Bayonne Bridge which has a clearance of 151 feet (July 2006 American Shipper, page 91).
   A new air gap sensor is being installed this year at the bottom of the Verrazano Narrows bridge because of the very large cruise ships like the 'Queen Mary' that now visit New York Harbor. McGovern notes that clearance beneath the Brooklyn-Staten Island span might become a problem if there was an unusually high tide on a hot summer day when the bridge was loaded with trucks and cars. The bridge, he explains can sag 10 feet on hot days when filled with bumper-to-bumper traffic, so exact information is needed.
   Wright notes that four new PORTS systems are being installed in the Gulf of Mexico as part of supplemental funding in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in Mobile, Ala.; Pascagoula and Gulfport, Miss.; and New Orleans.
   “There is a wide range of people who use the sensors, but I would say the pilots are our No. 1 customers because when they bring the big ships up a channel, having real time current and meteorological data is what they need,” Wright said.
   Other users include recreational boaters and fishermen, Coast Guard search-and-rescue teams, and firms doing environmental works such as the cleanup of oil spills.
   McGovern explained that having real time data can help a pilot determine if he can bring a ship to or from a berth immediately or whether he needs to wait for high tide.
   The information for the New York system and all those around the country can be accessed on the Internet at https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/ports.html
   The data can also be accessed by telephone, and many pilot stations keep it up on a computer screen full time. It is also accessible on the Vessel Traffic Services that the U.S. Coast Guard operates in several ports around the nation, including New York.
   NOAA is planning a study in the current year on the economic benefit of the PORTS system in New York. It did a similar study in Tampa Bay and recently completed one in the ports of Houston and Galveston.
   That study found while Houston and Galveston spend about $250,000 for maintenance, they realize a benefit of up $18 million per year, Wright said. The Tampa study in 2005 estimated a $4.4 million to $7 million benefit from its PORTS system.
   Major benefits come from reduced groundings, reduced delays from not having to wait for high tides to move ships, and being able to move more heavily laden ships in and out of port.
   McGovern said that while the PORT systems are local, they are of national and multistate importance. Anyone who doubts that, he says, should superimpose a map of the 'Exxon Valdez' oil spill over the U.S. East Coast. The area affected by the spill would stretch from Massachusetts to North Carolina, he said.
   The PORTS systems vary in complexity from a cluster of sensors at a single location in New Haven, Conn., to the hundreds of sensors that are at dozens of locations throughout Chesapeake Bay.
   Other PORTS locations include Los Angeles-Long Beach, the lower Columbia Bay, Narragansett Bay, the Port of Anchorage, San Francisco Bay, the Soo Locks, and Tacoma.