AAF related Coast Guard hearing backfires

[spuwho]

Under some political pressure, the Coast Guard agreed to have hearings with regards to any general navigation issues on 3 river channels.  What they got instead was something else.

Per TC Palm:

'Almost useless': Nearly all 3,000 comments from Coast Guard meetings mentioned All Aboard Florida



STUART — Virtually all of the 3,000 comments collected by the Coast Guard during meetings about navigation needs around three South Florida railroad drawbridges are useless, the Coast Guard said Wednesday.

Most comments were objections to All Aboard Florida, something the Coast Guard had warned in advance was beyond its responsibility.

"(The comments) were almost useless," said Barry Dragon, chief of bridge administration for the Seventh Coast Guard District.

The Coast Guard specifically discouraged comments on All Aboard Florida because the project does not currently affect navigation, Dragon said. The meetings — in Stuart, Jupiter and Hollywood in early November — were about current navigation concerns of boaters through the St. Lucie, Loxahatchee and New rivers' railroad bridges, not possible future effects of All Aboard Florida, which plans to run high-speed passenger trains between Miami and Orlando and require 32 additional daily closings of the bridges, Dragon said.

Comments with tidbits of information on current navigation needs — not All Aboard Florida — will help the Coast Guard propose new regulations to Florida East Coast Industries, which owns the three bridges and owns All Aboard Florida. New rules could include closing schedules and the addition of bridge tenders.

Dragon didn't rule out the possibility of future meetings on the controversial high-speed passenger train project.

"If All Aboard Florida does come to fruition, at that time, we'll see what mariners' needs are," Dragon said.

The Federal Railroad Administration received more than 12,000 comments about All Aboard Florida during a 75-day comment period and a series of eight meetings in October and November — including three on the Treasure Coast — as part of the process to update the draft environmental impact statement on the $2.25 billion project.

[Brian_Tampa]

Another article about the same topic but with more details of the permitting process AAF will have to go through to be able to operate 32 more trains each day.  Biggest point I see is what exactly does "reasonable needs" mean for both the boaters and for AAF?  How is that determined by the USCG?

http://www.tradeonlytoday.com/2015/01/florida-boaters-flood-coast-guard-comments-bridge-openings/

Florida boaters flood Coast Guard with comments on bridge openings

Posted on January 7th, 2015

Written by Jim Flannery

The Coast Guard gathered around 3,000 comments in hearings in November about the navigation needs of mariners at three railroad drawbridges that run over the New River in Fort Lauderdale, the Loxahatchee River in Jupiter and the St. Lucie River in Stuart, according to Barry Dragon, chief of bridge administration for the Seventh Coast Guard District.

Half to two-thirds of those comments registered concern with the All Aboard Florida high-speed passenger service proposed for the 128.5-mile Florida East Coast Railroad corridor from Miami to Cocoa and a new 40-mile east-west rail corridor on state-owned right-of-way from Cocoa to Orlando. But Dragon said that wasn't the hearings' purpose. The purpose was to gather information on how mariners use those waterways and what their "reasonable navigation needs" at the bridges are — today.

"The hardest part was getting mariners to tell me what their needs are, not what they think about All Aboard Florida," Dragon said.

The hearings — held Nov. 12-14 in Hollywood, Jupiter and Stuart — were in response to mariner complaints about long and/or unscheduled railroad bridge closures at those locations when completion of the preliminary environmental impact statement for AAF pushed the proposed rail service — and the impact of 32 more passenger trains a day — to front and center. However, Dragon said at this point it is uncertain whether AAF in its current iteration will get the Federal Railroad Administration's nod. If the service does get approval and AAF decides it wants to change the drawbridges' schedules, it will have to ask the Coast Guard for the changes to each bridge.

The district commander can decide the changes are unnecessary and deny the request. If it appears the changes are reasonable, his staff can undertake formal rulemaking to implement them, which would require public hearings. Dragon said Coast Guard hearings on AAF will come only when and if AAF moves forward with a plan to change the scheduled openings of the bridges for the high-speed trains.

In the meantime, he said, information gathered at November's hearings will be analyzed to see if the reasonable navigational needs of mariners are currently being met at those bridges. The Guard will talk to the FEC — the bridges' owner — to see what its needs are right now. Then bridge administrators will meet with the Captain of the Port, and if he decides the bridge opening schedule needs to be adjusted — and he may not decide that — the Coast Guard will post a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in the Federal Register, giving all parties a chance of comment on the proposed changes. An interim rule will follow, allowing yet more comment, and then a final rule.

"They'll get two more shots at anything we decide to do," he said.

Dragon notes that the Coast Guard is supposed to try to balance the needs of maritime and land transportation at the bridges, "putting together a schedule that works for both," he said. For mariners, the biggest issue often is knowing the schedule of closings and knowing that the railroad will keep that schedule so waterway users can schedule their movements up and down the river accordingly. Mariners "don't want to be guessing" when the bridge is going to be down, Dragon said.

Under the Rivers and Harbors Act, first adopted in 1824, anyone proposing to build a bridge over navigable waters must obtain a permit from the Coast Guard. The Coast Guard, which was given the job of permitting bridges in 1967, is tasked with protecting the reasonable needs of public navigation on navigable waterways.

" 'Reasonable needs' are the key words," Dragon said.

An in-depth story about the proposed railway and its impact on marine businesses appears in the January issue of Soundings Trade Only.

[spuwho]

Thanks Brian. I read the same article. Funny how one result can bring an article of different types?

[Brian_Tampa]

Well, when a newspaper has a certain agenda to rile up people and not present the whole picture on an issue, then a different outcome is a certainty!

I am not a subscriber to tradeonlytoday.com so unfortunately I can't read what appears to be a pretty good article about AAF mentioned at the end of the article I linked to.  Anyone able to see that article?