{"id":36756,"date":"2014-05-15T09:29:49","date_gmt":"2014-05-15T14:29:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/?p=36756"},"modified":"2014-05-15T09:31:32","modified_gmt":"2014-05-15T14:31:32","slug":"more-refining-and-bigger-ships-stress-sabine-neches-waterway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2014\/05\/15\/more-refining-and-bigger-ships-stress-sabine-neches-waterway\/","title":{"rendered":"More Refining and Bigger Ships Stress Sabine-Neches Waterway"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_36761\"  class=\"wp-caption module image right\" style=\"max-width: 300px;\"><a class=\"fancybox\" title=\"A tanker makes a call at the Sunoco Logistics terminal on the Sabine-Neches waterway in Nederland, Texas, April 26, 2013.\" href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2014\/05\/15680842_H23336658.jpg\" rel=\"\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-36761\" alt=\"A tanker makes a call at the Sunoco Logistics terminal on the Sabine-Neches waterway in Nederland, Texas, April 26, 2013.\" src=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2014\/05\/15680842_H23336658-300x206.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"206\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2014\/05\/15680842_H23336658-300x206.jpg 300w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2014\/05\/15680842_H23336658-620x425.jpg 620w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Reuters \/STAFF \/LANDOV<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">A tanker makes a call at the Sunoco Logistics terminal on the Sabine-Neches waterway in Nederland, Texas, April 26, 2013.<\/p><\/div>\n<h4><em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.houstonpublicmedia.org\/news\/infrastructure-week-highlights-transportation-funding-concerns-in-texas\/\">From Houston Public Media:<\/a>\u00a0<\/em><\/h4>\n<p>The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO are calling attention to the country&#8217;s aging roads, bridges, and shipping channels. It&#8217;s\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.infrastructureweek2014.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Infrastructure Week<\/a>, an annual event that looks at how the economy is affected when facilities aren&#8217;t properly maintained.<\/p>\n<p>Maintenance is a big issue right now on the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.usace.army.mil\/Portals\/2\/docs\/civilworks\/CWRB\/sabine\/sabine.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">Sabine-Neches Waterway<\/a>. It may not be as well known as the Houston Ship Channel but it handles a lot of business.<\/p>\n<p>Winding along the Texas-Louisiana border, the 63-mile-long waterway serves the ports of Beaumont and Port Arthur. It handles about 100 million tons of cargo a year and it&#8217;s a major refining center that&#8217;s responsible for about 288,000 jobs in the region.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=https%3A\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/149537799&amp;color=ff5500&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_artwork=true\" height=\"166\" width=\"100%\" frameborder=\"no\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>But port officials are concerned about the future as they prepare to handle bigger ships from a widened Panama Canal.\u00a0<!--more--><br \/>\nClayton Henderson is the Assistant Manager of the Sabine- Neches Navigation District. He says they&#8217;re already handling some larger vessels.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;As a matter of fact a lot of the ships that show up on our waterway currently, they&#8217;re already drafting as deep as they can, to the point where some of them are running two to three feet under-keel clearance.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The waterway&#8217;s main channels are currently about 40 feet deep, and Henderson says that doesn&#8217;t leave the bigger ships a lot of room to operate.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;For instance if you are a scuba diver and you were diving on our waterway, if you were crazy enough to do that, you probably couldn&#8217;t pass under that ship as it went overhead because it&#8217;s having to use so much of our waterway&#8217;s depth currently.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Deepening channels is a big concern for shippers, but the most pressing transportation issue for most Texans is roads.<\/p>\n<p>The American Society of Civil Engineers gave Texas an overall\u00a0 grade of &#8220;C&#8221; on its most recent\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.infrastructurereportcard.org\/texas\/texas\/\" target=\"_blank\">infrastructure report card<\/a>. Texas roads got a grade of &#8220;D.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>State Senator Robert Nichols chairs the Senate Transportation Committee. He says he&#8217;s concerned about the economic impact of failing infrastructure.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Well if people can&#8217;t get to work, and customers can&#8217;t get to businesses to purchase the goods they want, it will definitely impact in a negative fashion.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>TxDOT currently maintains close to 80,000 miles of highways in Texas and officials have pegged the state&#8217;s current transportation needs at about $4 billion. Nichols says those roads only last 40 to 50 years before they have to be rebuilt.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Traditional revenues for transportation which are state and federal fuel taxes, vehicle registration fees, no longer even cover the cost to preserve the system.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Nichols is backing a\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nichols.senate.state.tx.us\/pr13\/p061813a.htm\" target=\"_blank\">proposed constitutional amendment<\/a>\u00a0that would divert oil and gas revenue from the state&#8217;s rainy day fund, and put it toward transportation.<\/p>\n<p>But he says that alone isn&#8217;t enough, and the state needs to find additional sources of transportation funding.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;And we&#8217;ve been borrowing about $2 billion a year for the last 10 to 12 years, and we&#8217;ve racked up over $20 billion in debt.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Back at the Sabine-Neches Waterway, their financial picture may be getting a bit brighter. A\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/snnd.org\/news\/deeper-ports-backed-by-congress-as-panama-canal-expands\" target=\"_blank\">bill<\/a>\u00a0making its way through Congress would provide federal funds for a major dredging project that would deepen channels from 40 to 48 feet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From Houston Public Media:\u00a0 The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO are calling attention to the country&#8217;s aging roads, bridges, and shipping channels. It&#8217;s\u00a0Infrastructure Week, an annual event that looks at how the economy is affected when facilities aren&#8217;t properly maintained. Maintenance is a big issue right now on the\u00a0Sabine-Neches Waterway. It may not [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[59],"tags":[249],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36756"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36756"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36756\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36764,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36756\/revisions\/36764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}