Coast Guard OKs barge for giant Chinese crane

Oakland Tribune, Feb 22, 2008 by Lisa Vorderbrueggen

Bay Bridge contractors and federal maritime regulators have struck a deal that will avert a time and dollar catastrophe on the new span, and allow state and Bay Area transportation officials to heave a huge sigh of relief.

After months of tense talks over the interpretation of a 1920 law that protects the U.S. shipping industry, the Coast Guard has granted permission for bridge builders to use a barge built in Oregon and outfitted with a Chinese crane.

A joint venture of American Bridge Co. and Fluor Enterprises is building the final segment ofthe replacement bridge, a signature suspension span that will connect the skyway to Yerba Buena Island.

The extended legal wrangling came perilously close to triggering delays, cost overruns and political ramifications that sent shudders through everyone associated with the new bridge.

Without the unique $50 million barge and crane, the largest of its kind on the West Coast, work would have stalled for months, risking the lives of thousands of motorists on the old quake- vulnerable bridge and costing taxpayers tens of millions of dollars.

To stay on track for a 2012 to 2013 bridge opening date, the crane barge must report for work in the Bay Area no later than December. Caltrans estimates that round-trip sailing time to Shanghai and installation and testing of the crane will take 91/ 2months, which leaves very little wiggle room.

"We were on the bubble," Caltrans Toll Bridge Program Manager Tony Anziano said. "Every single person who has worked on this project truly believes that every single day matters. You don't give up a day that you don't have to, because that may be the day that matters. It goes beyond dollars."

The agreement reached between the contractor and the Coast Guard adds three weeks to the construction timeline.

The contractor will make up that time elsewhere in the schedule, said Michael Flowers, the American Bridge/Fluor construction project manager.

"What has been drilled into our heads is that if something happens to the existing bridge, the potential for loss of life is great," Flowers said. "We take that responsibility seriously.

The entire $6.3 billion replacement eastern span of the Bay Bridge is infamous for its ballooning price tag, frequent delays and political theater despite repeated engineers' warnings of the existing span's likely collapse in a major earthquake.

The Bay Bridge carries 280,000 vehicles a day near faultlines where the U.S. Geological Survey predicts a 62 percent chance that a magnitude 6.7 or greater quake will strike in the next 30 years. A portion of the eastern span deck collapsed 18 years ago in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, killing one woman.

The barge conundrum surfaced a year after Caltrans awarded the bid for the self-anchored suspension segment, when maritime regulators in May asked whether the vessel complied with the 1920 Jones Act. The act says vessels carrying goods and passengers between domestic ports must be U.S.-owned, -assembled and -crewed.

U.S. Barge finished the Left Coast Lifter in Portland, Ore., in early February, and the Zhenhua Port Machinery Company in Shanghai will outfit the barge later this year with a crane and stabilization equipment called sponsons.

A May 2007 Coast Guard letter said the Chinese crane and sponsons were "integral to the intended service of the barge" and the vessel was ineligible for U.S. certification.

But after months of discussions, the Coast Guard ruled last week that if the contractor puts the barge to work hauling materials on the West Coast before sending it to China, it would qualify as a U.S. flag vessel upon its return.

As of late last week, the barge was under tow off the Washington coast, headed south to Long Beach with a load of dredge materials. At the conclusion of the three-week job, oceangoing tugs will tow it to Shanghai.

Scrutiny of the barge's origins comes at a time when federal maritime regulators are under legal fire from domestic shipbuilders and trade unions who say allowing cheaper work overseas is undermining the U.S. shipping industry.

"There's no end to this pro-foreign-built administration we've got here," said Metal Trades President Ron Ault. "If we don't do something, there will never be another commercial ship built in the U.S."

In a suit filed in Pennsylvania in 2007, the Metal Trades Department of the AFL-CIO says the government violated the Jones Act when it allowed Aker Shipyard Philadelphia and a division of General Dynamics to produce "kit ship" tankers assembled from parts and modules imported from South Korea.

The Shipbuilders Council of America and Pasha Hawaii Transport filed a suit in 2006 challenging the government's decision to allow rival Oakland-based Matson Lines to refit three transport vessels in China.

No lawsuits have been filed against the Bay Bridge barge, but court rulings in these cases favorable to the industry or trade unions could jeopardize the status of all U.S.-flag certifications, Ault said.