WEBVTT - The 1906 Dredging Law That May Be Holding Back The U.S. Economy 0:00:10.840 --> 0:00:14.240 Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. 0:00:14.280 --> 0:00:17.720 I'm Tracy Alloway and I'm Joe wisn't thal Joe? Do 0:00:17.760 --> 0:00:20.599 you remember when you said you were going to base 0:00:20.640 --> 0:00:23.959 your entire identity on repealing the Foreign Dredge Act of 0:00:24.079 --> 0:00:28.200 nineteen o six, Right, yeah, I do so. I remember 0:00:28.240 --> 0:00:32.920 we did an episode very recently about your cargo that's 0:00:32.920 --> 0:00:36.800 still stuck on this ship outside Baltimore, and one of 0:00:36.840 --> 0:00:39.120 the things that came up was that there is this 0:00:39.240 --> 0:00:42.680 law from nineteen o six that prevents foreign dredging equipment 0:00:42.720 --> 0:00:45.880 from operating in the United States. The United States doesn't 0:00:45.920 --> 0:00:49.440 have a whole lot of high power dredging equipment. And 0:00:49.600 --> 0:00:53.840 I found that really wild, and so I jokingly said, hey, 0:00:53.880 --> 0:00:55.920 I was going to make that my whole identity, and 0:00:55.920 --> 0:00:57.880 only half jokingly said, now we have to do an 0:00:57.880 --> 0:01:00.760 episode on the Foreign Drudging Act of nineteen sex. I mean, 0:01:00.800 --> 0:01:02.960 I don't think any of those should be jokes anymore. 0:01:03.080 --> 0:01:05.760 I mean, I'm into it. Let's start. And this is 0:01:05.800 --> 0:01:08.800 not a joke to you at all. No, I stuff 0:01:08.840 --> 0:01:12.559 absolutely so. I have a personal interest in the health 0:01:12.640 --> 0:01:15.440 of the US dredging industry. Let's put it that way. 0:01:15.720 --> 0:01:19.440 Because all of my belongings are currently stuck on ever Forward, 0:01:19.520 --> 0:01:22.920 this giant container ship that ran into the mud bank 0:01:23.480 --> 0:01:26.720 in the Chesapeake Bay, it's still stuck there. There are 0:01:26.800 --> 0:01:29.800 dredgers at work. They're going to unload all the containers 0:01:29.800 --> 0:01:32.319 and see if they can refloat it. But again, one 0:01:32.319 --> 0:01:35.319 of the things that's emerged from this entire incident is, 0:01:36.280 --> 0:01:39.280 I guess years decades of under investment in the US 0:01:39.360 --> 0:01:42.520 dredging industry, so that we actually don't have a lot 0:01:42.560 --> 0:01:45.679 of dredging capacity. And our previous guest who was talking 0:01:45.680 --> 0:01:49.760 about this, cell Mercogliano. Again, he has a great YouTube 0:01:49.840 --> 0:01:51.920 channel if you're interested in what's going on with the 0:01:51.920 --> 0:01:54.640 ever Forward, But he was saying that the dredgers that 0:01:54.680 --> 0:01:56.960 are on the scene of the ever Forward right now 0:01:57.120 --> 0:02:01.720 can move about sixty cubic yards of mud in each 0:02:02.120 --> 0:02:04.760 you know, every time they sort of drudge the bottom, 0:02:04.840 --> 0:02:09.400 whereas other types of drudgers, international judgers, the kind that 0:02:09.440 --> 0:02:11.880 they had on scene with the Ever Given when it 0:02:11.960 --> 0:02:15.200 was stuck in the Suez Canal, those can move seventy 0:02:15.560 --> 0:02:18.840 thousand cubic yards of material in one hour. So that 0:02:18.919 --> 0:02:23.720 gives you an insight into the different levels of drudging capacity. 0:02:23.760 --> 0:02:28.040 We're talking about the other thing, and that is just 0:02:28.080 --> 0:02:30.880 a wild divergence. That was the aspect that blew my mind. 0:02:30.919 --> 0:02:34.280 And the fact that maybe a contributing factor to the 0:02:34.320 --> 0:02:36.919 lack of drudging capacity as a law that was over 0:02:36.919 --> 0:02:39.480 a century year old, that blew my mind. But you know, 0:02:39.600 --> 0:02:41.520 as we've sort of looked into this, and we have 0:02:41.560 --> 0:02:44.079 been talking about dudging within the context of freeing the 0:02:44.240 --> 0:02:47.920 ship and the one in the Suez last year. The 0:02:47.919 --> 0:02:50.519 other thing that is, it may be that a lot 0:02:50.560 --> 0:02:54.080 of infrastructure issues in the United States, when we talk 0:02:54.160 --> 0:02:57.640 about constrained capacity at the ports, when we talk about 0:02:57.680 --> 0:03:01.000 the fact that US ports don't necessarily have the capacity 0:03:01.080 --> 0:03:04.919 to handle easily the world's biggest ships, part of that 0:03:05.080 --> 0:03:07.960 may have to do with dredging. Absolutely. And you know, 0:03:08.200 --> 0:03:10.920 we've been building these ships bigger and bigger, and at 0:03:10.960 --> 0:03:14.040 the same time, the poor infrastructure hasn't grown alongside it. 0:03:14.120 --> 0:03:17.600 The dredging infrastructure hasn't grown alongside it either. So it 0:03:17.720 --> 0:03:20.720 is not just a problem of particular interest to me. 0:03:21.000 --> 0:03:23.480 It's a problem that we should all be focused on. 0:03:23.680 --> 0:03:28.280 And so here is an episode dedicated to the Foreign 0:03:28.440 --> 0:03:31.840 Dredge Act of nineteen o six, and I can't wait. Yeah, 0:03:31.880 --> 0:03:34.160 we we really do have the perfect guest for this one. 0:03:34.720 --> 0:03:37.240 So we are going to be speaking with Howard Gutman. 0:03:37.360 --> 0:03:40.680 He is the managing director of the Gutman Group consultancy 0:03:40.720 --> 0:03:44.560 and also the former US Ambassador to Belgium. We're also 0:03:44.640 --> 0:03:47.600 going to be speaking with Andrew Durant. He is a 0:03:47.680 --> 0:03:52.680 managing director at Samuel's International Associates, another consultancy. But they're 0:03:52.680 --> 0:03:55.240 going to be able to give us, you know, the 0:03:55.240 --> 0:03:58.880 the pro repealing the Foreign Dredge Act. We're going to 0:03:59.000 --> 0:04:02.000 have to do afterward, probably like keep the Foreign Dredge 0:04:02.040 --> 0:04:04.560 Jack just out of fairness. But yeah, I'm very excited about. Okay, 0:04:04.920 --> 0:04:07.800 let's do it. Howard and Andrew, welcome to the show. 0:04:08.960 --> 0:04:12.600 Pleas for me here, So why don't we begin with 0:04:12.720 --> 0:04:15.560 the very basic stuff? What is the Foreign Dudge Act 0:04:15.600 --> 0:04:19.560 of nineteen o six and what happened in nineteen o 0:04:19.640 --> 0:04:22.960 six or earlier to make the US think that it 0:04:23.120 --> 0:04:26.920 only wants to have dredgers that are built and crewed 0:04:27.560 --> 0:04:32.240 by Americans. And so what happened in nineteen o six 0:04:32.279 --> 0:04:36.200 actually starts with what happened in and that is that 0:04:36.240 --> 0:04:41.799 there was a huge storm that hit Galveston, Texas directly. 0:04:41.880 --> 0:04:45.719 Galveston at that time was, if I'm not mistaken, the 0:04:45.839 --> 0:04:50.880 largest city in Texas. It was a thriving port town, 0:04:51.760 --> 0:04:57.280 and the flood that ensued essentially wiped the town out, 0:04:58.040 --> 0:05:02.520 killed and it maybe e to sixteen thousand people and 0:05:02.720 --> 0:05:07.800 was an absolute catastrophe. So the town fathers decided that 0:05:07.960 --> 0:05:10.159 what they needed to do was rebuilt. But they weren't 0:05:10.160 --> 0:05:13.400 going to rebuild at the current elevation because they knew 0:05:13.400 --> 0:05:15.320 it would just be a matter of time before another 0:05:15.360 --> 0:05:18.960 storm would hit Galveston and do the same thing all 0:05:18.960 --> 0:05:21.640 over again. So they decided they were going to raise 0:05:21.800 --> 0:05:26.000 the town by ten ft. And so in order to 0:05:26.040 --> 0:05:30.200 do that, they needed a massive drudging capacity that did 0:05:30.200 --> 0:05:34.920 not exist in the United States. They put they put 0:05:34.960 --> 0:05:37.480 this job up forbid. There were two bidders. The winning 0:05:37.480 --> 0:05:41.960 bidder designed and built hopper drudges, which what we can 0:05:42.000 --> 0:05:45.240 talk about in a little bit about the distinction between 0:05:45.279 --> 0:05:48.799 the different kinds of drudges. But they designed and began 0:05:48.839 --> 0:05:51.559 to build hopper drudges that would be able to carry 0:05:51.600 --> 0:05:56.279 this job out. And so as that project got started, 0:05:57.160 --> 0:06:00.400 uh in nineteen in nineteen o three, you know, for 0:06:01.640 --> 0:06:05.640 Eventually there was a concern not from the shipbuilders themselves, 0:06:05.760 --> 0:06:09.320 but from the Commissioner of Customs that hey, maybe this 0:06:09.400 --> 0:06:12.159 is somehow gonna this is going to create a problem 0:06:12.200 --> 0:06:15.919 for US. We need to put in place restrictions that 0:06:16.000 --> 0:06:20.000 say that these stretches can only be built in U 0:06:20.120 --> 0:06:24.400 S shipyards. And so by nineteen o six, the protectionist 0:06:24.520 --> 0:06:27.080 argument that this has to be these ships have to 0:06:27.080 --> 0:06:30.560 be built in the United States had one the day, 0:06:30.800 --> 0:06:34.320 and that legislation was signed into law by Theodore Roosevelt. 0:06:35.000 --> 0:06:37.440 Can you just explain that a little bit for the 0:06:37.560 --> 0:06:40.240 What specifically was the concern was that there is this 0:06:40.360 --> 0:06:44.680 investment in domestic dredging, and the concern was that the 0:06:44.880 --> 0:06:48.920 foreign competition to domestic dredging would undercut the market. Like 0:06:49.320 --> 0:06:51.799 what was the I'm trying to wrap my head around 0:06:52.040 --> 0:06:57.560 the perceived threat that this law addresses. So the concern 0:06:57.800 --> 0:07:02.640 was that somehow in in dredging up the sand, that 0:07:02.720 --> 0:07:04.680 they were going to put it on barges and they 0:07:04.760 --> 0:07:07.800 might take those barges somewhere else and use the sand 0:07:08.240 --> 0:07:11.440 in another port or another location in the US. So 0:07:11.440 --> 0:07:15.600 they were stealing US sand. Was the stealing US sand 0:07:15.680 --> 0:07:18.960 became game kind of the concern, But as it evolved, 0:07:19.120 --> 0:07:22.680 what really carried the day was that we should be 0:07:22.720 --> 0:07:26.880 building these these US brudges in the United States. What 0:07:27.120 --> 0:07:30.560 is the state of the U S dredging industry now 0:07:30.600 --> 0:07:32.920 and how does it compare with the rest of the world. 0:07:32.960 --> 0:07:36.920 So we had decades of protectionism and this law in 0:07:37.040 --> 0:07:40.360 place mandating that dredgers be built in the U S 0:07:40.400 --> 0:07:45.000 and crewed by Americans. What has been the result? So 0:07:45.160 --> 0:07:50.440 today the thirty one largest dredgers in the world are 0:07:50.480 --> 0:07:54.880 owned by two Belgian and two Dutch companies, the subsidiaries 0:07:54.880 --> 0:07:57.840 of which the U S subsidiaries of which already are 0:07:58.000 --> 0:08:01.600 major American companies. They build all the off shore wind mills, 0:08:01.640 --> 0:08:04.679 so those same companies are allowed to work in these 0:08:04.720 --> 0:08:08.120 waters in the US waters building the offshore windmills, but 0:08:08.240 --> 0:08:11.640 they also own the thirty one largest dredgers in the world, 0:08:12.520 --> 0:08:16.920 many over forty thod cubic meters, so four times as 0:08:17.040 --> 0:08:20.080 large as any vessel that exists in the US. The 0:08:20.280 --> 0:08:23.240 US is trying to meet the dredge demand, to dredge 0:08:23.280 --> 0:08:27.480 it sports and to do coastal protection. When it has 0:08:27.680 --> 0:08:30.720 of the top fifty dredgers in the world, it has 0:08:30.920 --> 0:08:34.040 three of them. It has number thirty two and then 0:08:34.120 --> 0:08:36.960 two others in the top fifty. The rest are by 0:08:37.080 --> 0:08:41.480 these large companies that are already American companies. They're allowed 0:08:41.520 --> 0:08:44.800 to build the off shore wind mills. They create a 0:08:44.960 --> 0:08:49.440 lot of jobs in America. They just can't alongside dig 0:08:49.559 --> 0:08:52.800 in the sand because of this nineteen oh six law, 0:08:53.440 --> 0:08:57.160 and it caused America millions or tens of millions of 0:08:57.240 --> 0:09:00.200 dollars of jobs and billions of dollars. If you are 0:09:00.240 --> 0:09:03.720 in Savannah, you spent over a billion dollars for report 0:09:03.840 --> 0:09:07.480 deepening project that would have cost under five hundred million. 0:09:08.080 --> 0:09:11.000 And if you are in Virginia right now, you are 0:09:11.120 --> 0:09:13.960 spending it was supposed to be three d and fifty million, 0:09:14.160 --> 0:09:17.079 it's now four hundred and fifty million for a project 0:09:17.160 --> 0:09:20.360 that should cost hundreds of millions less. So what do 0:09:20.440 --> 0:09:23.839 you actually walk us through the math here? A little 0:09:23.880 --> 0:09:27.800 bit more specifically, because we've talked on this show a 0:09:28.000 --> 0:09:32.199 number of times about the ports and pork bottlenecks and 0:09:32.320 --> 0:09:35.160 pork capacity and the issue and we talked about this 0:09:35.200 --> 0:09:38.160 in the intro, the issue of these very large ships 0:09:38.200 --> 0:09:40.800 that are getting bigger and bigger and the difficulty that 0:09:40.920 --> 0:09:43.280 they have entering U s ports, and we see at 0:09:43.280 --> 0:09:45.880 the Port of Los Angeles, but obviously otherwise when you 0:09:46.000 --> 0:09:52.160 throw out these numbers at US, explain why constrained US 0:09:52.240 --> 0:09:56.160 dredge capacity adds so much more to the cost of 0:09:56.320 --> 0:09:59.320 port expansions and thus makes it such that our ports 0:09:59.320 --> 0:10:02.480 aren't as big, high capacity as they could be. So 0:10:02.640 --> 0:10:06.800 let's take Houston for example. Houston should be the most 0:10:07.000 --> 0:10:12.000 important port for America because producing oil and gas in 0:10:12.160 --> 0:10:16.200 Houston is cheaper than producing it in the country of Georgia, 0:10:16.640 --> 0:10:20.439 for example. But Boston right now is getting its gas 0:10:20.880 --> 0:10:24.320 from the country of Georgia than it is from Houston 0:10:24.960 --> 0:10:28.520 because delivered the greatest country in the world cannot get 0:10:28.600 --> 0:10:32.760 its gas delivered to Boston cheaper than it can get 0:10:32.840 --> 0:10:35.959 it delivered from the country of Georgia because the port 0:10:36.080 --> 0:10:40.199 in Houston is broken. What happened was they had two lanes. 0:10:40.280 --> 0:10:43.920 At one time. Container ships would pass, tankers going in, 0:10:44.160 --> 0:10:47.160 containers going out Andy. And I went to the port 0:10:47.200 --> 0:10:50.200 and said, you've got less than a year left before 0:10:50.280 --> 0:10:53.720 it's gonna get so narrow and so shallow that ships 0:10:53.760 --> 0:10:57.000 will no longer be able to pass over two years 0:10:57.080 --> 0:11:01.120 ago that came true. One of the ships containers coming 0:11:01.160 --> 0:11:04.000 in refused to pass a tanker coming out. The port 0:11:04.040 --> 0:11:07.480 of Houston was reduced to one wane and we said 0:11:07.559 --> 0:11:11.480 this could be dredged in a year to the capacities 0:11:11.520 --> 0:11:14.679 to allow the deepest tankers, the post Panamax tankers and 0:11:14.760 --> 0:11:19.120 containers to go freely into Houston. That would reduce export 0:11:19.240 --> 0:11:23.199 costs more than it would make our manufacturing goods and 0:11:23.240 --> 0:11:27.080 agricultural goods going out of Houston competitive by more than 0:11:27.120 --> 0:11:30.120 competitive by fient, and it would make our oil and 0:11:30.200 --> 0:11:33.040 gas exports, let's say the Europe when you needed for 0:11:33.120 --> 0:11:36.360 the Ukraine and Russia, way cheaper. It would make us 0:11:36.400 --> 0:11:39.719 a major energy exporter. All you have to do is 0:11:39.840 --> 0:11:43.280 dredge Houston. There's enough money right now because if you 0:11:43.440 --> 0:11:45.559 use one of the state of the art dredgers that 0:11:45.679 --> 0:11:48.560 dredge the rest of the world, the cost is less 0:11:48.679 --> 0:11:51.480 than half and the time to do it is less 0:11:51.520 --> 0:11:54.920 than a third. So this can be done right right now. 0:11:55.520 --> 0:11:59.760 And in support Director favored us doing that, the fight 0:12:00.120 --> 0:12:03.319 men to protect the the Dredge Act of nineteen o six. 0:12:03.440 --> 0:12:08.199 So instead of doing that, the Texas legislature met and 0:12:08.360 --> 0:12:13.280 passed the law restricting contain large container ships from entering 0:12:13.320 --> 0:12:15.800 the port of Houston to one a week so they 0:12:15.880 --> 0:12:19.079 don't block the oil ships coming out. So now the 0:12:19.160 --> 0:12:22.680 greatest country in the world has a law preventing container 0:12:22.760 --> 0:12:26.200 ships from entering one of its greatest ports because they 0:12:26.640 --> 0:12:29.760 cannot get them in. So if we just dredged Euston 0:12:29.840 --> 0:12:32.800 at half the cost in the third time, that would 0:12:32.840 --> 0:12:35.760 create and support over one point six million new American 0:12:35.880 --> 0:12:40.080 jobs by lowering the costs of exports by over fifteen percent, 0:12:40.360 --> 0:12:44.240 it would change our energy security picture. And by the way, 0:12:44.320 --> 0:12:47.080 since we know Houston is gonna flood anyway, we've seen 0:12:47.120 --> 0:12:50.839 what happens in Houston. These dredges that the state of 0:12:50.880 --> 0:12:53.080 the art dredges. When they do a dredge project, they 0:12:53.080 --> 0:12:57.320 would do the coastal protection project that would also protect Euston. 0:12:57.360 --> 0:13:00.079 It's called the Kelike project. But there's no way that 0:13:00.160 --> 0:13:03.040 could ever be done with US dredgers, not in the 0:13:03.160 --> 0:13:07.160 next twenty or thirty years. Is the issue this law 0:13:07.360 --> 0:13:11.199 and the restrictions around who can dredge, or is the 0:13:11.360 --> 0:13:16.640 issue under investment in that particular industry. So, you know, 0:13:16.760 --> 0:13:20.079 we do have an American dredging industry, but it seems 0:13:20.120 --> 0:13:22.240 like it hasn't actually grown that much, even though it 0:13:22.360 --> 0:13:25.920 is mandated to do all this work and doesn't necessarily 0:13:26.000 --> 0:13:29.839 have competition to do it. It's who can dredge. It's 0:13:29.920 --> 0:13:33.720 not under investment that these ships that we're talking about, 0:13:33.760 --> 0:13:36.479 they're not built in China. They're built in the Netherlands, 0:13:37.080 --> 0:13:39.559 where the cost of labor and the cost of energy 0:13:39.720 --> 0:13:42.679 is higher. These aren't Chief ships or the like. We 0:13:42.800 --> 0:13:46.560 don't have a shipyard in the US that could build 0:13:46.800 --> 0:13:49.719 one of these dredges. We don't have the technology to 0:13:49.800 --> 0:13:52.440 know how, and we don't have the investment because there's 0:13:52.559 --> 0:13:58.400 only three companies that own basically three vessels that or 0:13:58.480 --> 0:14:02.120 even can do a port dredging. So those three get 0:14:02.200 --> 0:14:05.160 all the business. They're happy if we have to wait 0:14:05.600 --> 0:14:08.040 twenty five years for report to be done, it's still 0:14:08.160 --> 0:14:12.120 their work. So the three company protection is m is 0:14:12.200 --> 0:14:15.680 what's swimmiting it if in fact you open the dredge 0:14:15.760 --> 0:14:18.480 law and allow these big ships to come in and 0:14:18.679 --> 0:14:21.760 join the all the marine work they're doing for off 0:14:21.840 --> 0:14:26.680 shore wind these companies work all union, they have signed 0:14:26.760 --> 0:14:30.040 project labor agreements. The foreign companies, it would be all 0:14:30.320 --> 0:14:34.120 union of American employment with the same exact workers, but 0:14:34.280 --> 0:14:37.680 we would have coastal protection projects and poort deepning projects 0:14:38.120 --> 0:14:41.360 being done for half the cost, So we could actually 0:14:41.480 --> 0:14:45.240 have dredges available to do Houston and Corpus and Browns. 0:14:45.240 --> 0:14:48.360 Will eliminate the supply chain problem that we have that 0:14:48.440 --> 0:14:51.000 we can't get ships into our ports. We were the 0:14:51.080 --> 0:14:54.080 costs of energy and our exports, and we would still 0:14:54.200 --> 0:14:57.720 have ships to do coastal protection. There is a plan 0:14:57.960 --> 0:15:02.880 right now, as I mentioned, According to center Schumer, ninety 0:15:02.960 --> 0:15:06.560 thousand New Yorkers have to be relocated from south of 0:15:06.640 --> 0:15:10.520 Wall Street by twenty fifty, that's twenty eight years. In 0:15:10.560 --> 0:15:13.480 the next twenty eight years, Wall Street will be flooded. 0:15:13.640 --> 0:15:17.320 There are two proposals to address that. A ten billion 0:15:17.440 --> 0:15:22.400 dollar project wall and building sevent dred acres onto Lower Manhattan. 0:15:22.480 --> 0:15:27.600 We would have Manhattan become fifteen percent larger. Both projects 0:15:27.680 --> 0:15:31.160 are routine for the rest of the world. There have 0:15:31.240 --> 0:15:35.720 been projects adding acres, so projects that are four times 0:15:35.880 --> 0:15:38.440 larger in the rest of the world done by these dredgers. 0:15:38.760 --> 0:15:42.200 Can you imagine the value of adding fifteen percent to 0:15:42.320 --> 0:15:46.320 Lower Manhattan the value of that project, It's the money 0:15:46.360 --> 0:15:50.080 would pays for itself. Center Schumer was told when he 0:15:50.120 --> 0:15:52.360 went to the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers, we 0:15:52.480 --> 0:15:55.520 will not have the dredging capacity nor the money to 0:15:55.680 --> 0:15:59.880 build the wall, let alone the additional acreage onto Lower Manhattan. 0:16:00.000 --> 0:16:02.720 We don't have a coastal protection policy. I so, you know, 0:16:02.800 --> 0:16:04.800 I've I've I've read about and heard about some of 0:16:04.880 --> 0:16:08.840 these ideas to add land to Manhattan, and I was like, Oh, 0:16:08.920 --> 0:16:11.760 that's fanciful. That's never gonna happen. It's just like something 0:16:11.840 --> 0:16:14.200 that people like to think about. But hey, it is 0:16:14.280 --> 0:16:16.240 interesting that I guess it could actually happen. But be 0:16:16.880 --> 0:16:21.000 it comes back to this Act of six, the lack 0:16:21.040 --> 0:16:24.240 of dredging capacity. Now, before we move on, I want 0:16:24.240 --> 0:16:27.640 to ask one more question. You mentioned the fact that 0:16:28.400 --> 0:16:31.800 cheap oil and gas from Houston isn't making its way 0:16:32.040 --> 0:16:36.160 by ship to Boston, where they're instead important gas from 0:16:36.160 --> 0:16:39.760 the country of Georgia. I was under the impression that 0:16:39.920 --> 0:16:42.440 that had something to do with the Jones Act. And 0:16:42.800 --> 0:16:45.560 that's like, it seems like the two laws often are 0:16:45.840 --> 0:16:49.040 associated with each other, but hey, can you sort of 0:16:49.120 --> 0:16:51.640 talk about how the two laws relate, And you also 0:16:51.840 --> 0:16:54.160 say that that one is more well known. It seems 0:16:54.160 --> 0:16:56.800 to be a little bit more controversial. You say that 0:16:57.320 --> 0:17:00.280 you could we could get value from repealing the Dredge 0:17:00.320 --> 0:17:04.880 Act without necessarily repealing the Jones Act. In fact, appealing 0:17:05.000 --> 0:17:09.320 the Dredge Act protects the Jones Act. The companies were 0:17:09.400 --> 0:17:14.480 talking about, our construction companies, they don't own a transportation ship, 0:17:14.600 --> 0:17:18.920 so the Jones Act protects transportation of goods and people 0:17:19.119 --> 0:17:22.959 in US waters. That's a transportation issue, and that's very 0:17:23.000 --> 0:17:27.280 important in this country, and nobody is arguing to touch 0:17:27.400 --> 0:17:29.680 that in the least. We can build the ships to 0:17:29.800 --> 0:17:33.720 transport people and goods if they can get in and 0:17:33.800 --> 0:17:36.000 out of our ports. We're not talking about touching the 0:17:36.080 --> 0:17:40.680 transportation industry, and the law currently proposed to repeal the 0:17:40.760 --> 0:17:44.119 Dredge Act would not touch the Jones Act if that 0:17:44.320 --> 0:17:48.680 law passed. What we're talking about is the construction industry. 0:17:49.080 --> 0:17:54.240 We're talking about port contractors. The issue is getting ships 0:17:54.520 --> 0:17:57.960 that are the right size into our port. Obviously, we 0:17:58.080 --> 0:18:01.760 can't get them in at being three times larger than 0:18:01.800 --> 0:18:03.879 the standard ship if they're going to get stuck in 0:18:04.040 --> 0:18:07.800 Baltimore on the bottom of the port. So what we 0:18:07.920 --> 0:18:10.800 need to is get it deeper once they're there. That 0:18:10.960 --> 0:18:13.920 will make up most of the cost. The Dredge Act 0:18:13.960 --> 0:18:17.160 can be amended, and the proposal to do so that's 0:18:17.200 --> 0:18:20.160 currently in front of the Senate would do so without 0:18:20.320 --> 0:18:23.879 touching the Jones Act. But what happens here is the 0:18:24.080 --> 0:18:27.920 three or four companies that are the small you know, 0:18:28.040 --> 0:18:30.520 companies to five thousand people who work in dredging in 0:18:30.560 --> 0:18:33.320 the US, almost all of whom would continue to work 0:18:33.359 --> 0:18:35.680 in dredging, just on a lot larger projects with the 0:18:35.720 --> 0:18:39.959 same project labor agreements. The owners of those companies say, oh, 0:18:40.119 --> 0:18:43.040 they're really seeking to attack the Jones Act, and they 0:18:43.119 --> 0:18:46.119 bring in all the shipping interests to protect the Dredge 0:18:46.160 --> 0:18:48.679 Act when they have nothing to do with one another. 0:18:49.680 --> 0:18:54.639 M what are the other impediments to amending or repealing 0:18:55.080 --> 0:18:58.720 the Dredge Act? I mean, I imagine environmental concerns must 0:18:58.880 --> 0:19:03.240 figure in their one way or another, and for instance, 0:19:03.480 --> 0:19:06.040 the situation with the ever forward. I know people are 0:19:06.080 --> 0:19:09.720 starting to worry about the impact on on crabbing season, 0:19:09.880 --> 0:19:13.000 which is coming up in Maryland. And look, I've already 0:19:13.040 --> 0:19:16.800 declared my interest in higher dredging capacity because I love 0:19:16.880 --> 0:19:19.879 my couch, but I also love Maryland crab cakes. And 0:19:20.119 --> 0:19:22.960 you know, ideally I would have both. Ideally I would 0:19:22.960 --> 0:19:26.520 sit on my couch while eating crab cakes. But you know, 0:19:26.680 --> 0:19:29.680 what are the environmental concerns around dredging and how would 0:19:29.840 --> 0:19:34.480 repealing the act affect the health of US coasts? Andy, 0:19:34.480 --> 0:19:37.320 why do you tell them about Miami? Sure? Well, so 0:19:37.480 --> 0:19:40.560 a few a few things, Tracy. The first is that, yeah, 0:19:40.600 --> 0:19:43.600 if you look at actually the modern drudges that are 0:19:43.880 --> 0:19:47.280 that are being built in in UH and European shipyards 0:19:47.320 --> 0:19:50.040 that are being used around the world, unfortunately just not 0:19:50.359 --> 0:19:53.800 in the United States, you see a couple of differences 0:19:53.880 --> 0:19:58.680 that actually make them more environmentally friendly. The first is 0:19:58.840 --> 0:20:03.159 that the newest than most modern dredges are using l 0:20:03.240 --> 0:20:07.560 n G as opposed to marine diesels, so they're they're 0:20:07.560 --> 0:20:12.080 a manting a lot a lot less emissions as they're working. 0:20:12.760 --> 0:20:16.680 The second issue, and this was a real tragedy in Miami, 0:20:16.880 --> 0:20:20.800 is is because the dredges that we use are so 0:20:21.000 --> 0:20:25.040 called cutter drudges, but they weren't powerful enough to to 0:20:25.280 --> 0:20:28.200 chew basically through some of the rock that they needed 0:20:28.280 --> 0:20:31.560 to remove in order to create a deeper channel for 0:20:31.880 --> 0:20:35.520 cruise ships. They had to use blastic and so in 0:20:35.640 --> 0:20:38.879 blasting that creates a lot of turbidity. That's you know, 0:20:39.080 --> 0:20:41.080 a lot of sand, a lot of debris kind of 0:20:41.119 --> 0:20:45.639 gets moved around that wound up on coral and it 0:20:45.720 --> 0:20:48.080 actually wound up bleaching and killing a lot of the 0:20:48.160 --> 0:20:52.359 coral and creating a huge environmental disaster. If you have 0:20:52.800 --> 0:20:56.840 again the new state of the art Hopper dredges, you 0:20:56.920 --> 0:21:01.159 can control much more for to a bidity. You can 0:21:01.320 --> 0:21:05.840 therefore do it without disturbing the vegetation and the coral 0:21:06.080 --> 0:21:09.080 that's around it. And so that's why you can see, 0:21:09.160 --> 0:21:12.600 for example, that that the companies that were taught that 0:21:12.680 --> 0:21:14.560 we'd like to be able to bring into the US 0:21:15.480 --> 0:21:20.399 do very sensitive environmental projects, say along ports in Australia 0:21:20.480 --> 0:21:24.399 that are adjacent to the Great Barrier reef with with 0:21:24.840 --> 0:21:30.879 very intensive environmental monitoring done by the Australian government, by 0:21:31.119 --> 0:21:34.160 mng O S and by the companies that are doing 0:21:34.240 --> 0:21:39.239 the work themselves. So um, the other point that I make, 0:21:39.280 --> 0:21:41.399 as long as we're on the environment, is that in 0:21:41.480 --> 0:21:44.919 a lot of cases, uh, these same dredges are actually 0:21:45.119 --> 0:21:48.920 very important if you're going to create coastal features or 0:21:48.960 --> 0:21:52.360 if you're going to try to restore wetlands, that will 0:21:52.440 --> 0:21:54.719 do a couple of things. One, it will serve as 0:21:54.760 --> 0:21:59.040 a barrier with when you have major storms that are 0:21:59.200 --> 0:22:03.040 that are heading or population centers. But the second and 0:22:03.400 --> 0:22:06.399 more pervasive is that they will create barriers from salt 0:22:06.440 --> 0:22:10.399 water incursion, like the kind of incursion that we're seeing 0:22:10.440 --> 0:22:14.520 in Louisiana, which you know, once you get salt water 0:22:14.680 --> 0:22:18.000 into an environment, it's it's gonna it's gonna devastate the 0:22:18.119 --> 0:22:35.000 natural environment that was there. Can you talk a little 0:22:35.000 --> 0:22:38.639 bit more about the two types of dredgers and the 0:22:38.720 --> 0:22:41.640 different technologies, because I think there's interesting. You know, our 0:22:41.640 --> 0:22:44.200 our listeners definitely are interested in the law and investment 0:22:44.280 --> 0:22:46.960 and stuff, but actually hearing the two different approaches to 0:22:47.320 --> 0:22:50.640 dredging would be really helpful. And then these new dredges 0:22:50.800 --> 0:22:53.119 or the state of the art dredges, what do they 0:22:53.240 --> 0:22:55.399 you know, what do they have? What what makes them unique? 0:22:56.359 --> 0:22:58.560 So I would say the easiest way to look think 0:22:58.560 --> 0:23:01.720 about it is is you've got hopper dredges, which is 0:23:01.880 --> 0:23:04.639 essentially state of the art, which is used again in 0:23:04.680 --> 0:23:06.960 the rest of the world. That's that's what most people 0:23:07.000 --> 0:23:09.000 will have in their main fleet. I think of them 0:23:09.040 --> 0:23:13.040 as very large vacuum cleaners. So they're gonna they're gonna 0:23:13.160 --> 0:23:16.159 vacuum material up that needs to be moved. They're going 0:23:16.200 --> 0:23:19.280 to store that material in the hull of the ship, 0:23:20.160 --> 0:23:22.840 and then they're gonna sail off with that material and 0:23:22.920 --> 0:23:25.800 they're either going to go to a deposit site that's 0:23:25.840 --> 0:23:28.520 off shore and the bottom of the hull is going 0:23:28.560 --> 0:23:30.720 to open up and that material is going to fall 0:23:30.800 --> 0:23:33.560 down into into the place that the coast guard has 0:23:34.280 --> 0:23:37.359 has said it should be put, or they're going to 0:23:37.560 --> 0:23:40.119 use that material and they're going to use it to 0:23:40.320 --> 0:23:42.840 create They're going to replenish your beach, or they're gonna 0:23:42.960 --> 0:23:45.480 they're gonna build a barrier island, or they'll do something 0:23:45.520 --> 0:23:50.680 else that's called beneficially used. So those are hopper dredges. Again, 0:23:50.720 --> 0:23:53.080 if you look around at the rest of the world 0:23:53.280 --> 0:23:56.040 and see what they're using for their for their jobs, 0:23:56.720 --> 0:23:58.600 most of the most of that work is going to 0:23:58.680 --> 0:24:01.800 be done using hopper dredge. The other type, and the 0:24:01.880 --> 0:24:05.920 type that the US industry is very reliant upon, are 0:24:05.960 --> 0:24:09.840 called counter suction dredges. Think of them as kind of 0:24:09.960 --> 0:24:13.280