Wicomico Co. looks to expand Port of Salisbury

SALISBURY, Md. -- It's a sobering threat to the future of business in Wicomico County: the end of federal dredging of the Wicomico River.

For decades, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has invested millions of dollars in the river's upkeep.

Without it, the river would get choked with silt in a matter of years. Only the most modest of vessels would be left to navigate its waters, and several businesses and hundreds of jobs would find themselves in serious jeopardy.

The stream of federal aid is at risk of running dry if the amount of freight hauled on the river drops below a five-year average of 1 million tons a year.

The future is now — the river's users have failed to reach 1 million tons for three out of the past five years. Fearing the worst, several county leaders say something must be done to reverse the trend or Maryland's second-largest port could be forced to close.

That something, they suggest, is a new county-run port.

"We've talked for as long as I've been here how great an asset the port is, and what have we done for it over the last 20 years?" asked County Administrator Wayne Strausburg at a recent public hearing before the County Council. "There needs to be some vision."

The plan outlined by Strausburg and Public Works Director Lee Beauchamp at that time was little more than a sketch: The county would acquire land in the industrial area on the north end of the river and lease port space to businesses that otherwise couldn't afford to build a port of their own.

Cost hasn't been discussed, but it almost certainly require local officials to pony up millions of dollars even after accounting for state and federal grants.

The county made its first substantial investment in May, with the County Council setting aside $26,500 toward hiring a consultant. The Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development is chipping in a matching amount.

Martin Associates is expected to use that money to draw up a strategic plan. It has written similar plans for several other ports, including the Port of Baltimore.

It's likely going to take 10 weeks for the consultant to finish the report once it gets started and multiple years before a port gets built, if the project gets that far. But the early reviews, particularly from businesses, are enthusiastic.

Tim Emge is vice president of terminal operations for Cato Gas & Oil, which barges petroleum products up the river. He also serves on the board of directors of Delmarva Water Transport Committee, a 40-year-old nonprofit that is the closest thing the river has to a port authority.

A new county port would have little effect on Cato's operations, but he said he supports anything that helps assure the future of river navigation.

"This could be a prime hub still and continue to be for prime materials like sand to be shipped out of Salisbury, instead of stuff always coming in," Emge said.

The vast majority of the river's freight consists of imports: chicken feed for Perdue Farms, Cato's oil and gas, Vulcan Materials' stone construction material. Of that, Cato's haul accounts for more than half.

Much of the drop in freight can be attributed to the plummeting demand for construction materials and lower fuel consumption, county officials say.

The region doesn't export much, but it might if the port was expanded, county officials said in a report. Wicomico ships 2.5 million tons of freight a year to other port regions by truck, it said.

Transporting goods by boat presents a savings to businesses and consumers, Emge said. The U.S. Department of Transportation estimates that a barge can haul a ton of freight 514 miles on 1 gallon of gas. That gallon can only take a train 202 miles and a truck 59 miles.

One petroleum-hauling barge has the carrying capacity of 150 large trucks, Emge said. In a typical year, the port strips 123,000 trucks off local roadways, officials estimate.

A Salisbury University study found that a county port would expand the region's economy 5 percent to 10 percent within the first five years of full-scale operations. In Wicomico alone, it would create 2,000 to 5,000 jobs that would pay at or above the area median income, economists said.

County officials envision other perks. The new port could be accompanied by a new industrial park, which would be powered by electricity generated by a waste-to-energy plant that's also in the works. And if that weren't synergistic enough, the plant's waste-processing component could transport materials through the port as well, officials say.

The only potential tenant of the port identified specifically by county officials is Salisbury-based poultry giant Perdue Farms. The company ships grain via the river to a facility that lies just north of downtown Salisbury.

Getting there, however, requires two drawbridges on West Main Street and business U.S. 50 to be raised.

The resulting backups have been a headache for drivers for decades. And the location limits the size of the barges Perdue can use.

The county port proposal may be worth exploring, a Perdue spokeswoman said.

"I think we're certainly willing to work with them on that sort of proposal," Julie DeYoung said.

Some county leaders say it would make sense for the city of Salisbury to get involved in the project, since much of the existing port facility lie within its boundaries. For his part, the mayor said the port expansion is "an exciting prospect."

"We are in support of expanding the Port of Salisbury," Jim Ireton said, adding that a location along Marine Road would need to be annexed into the city to be served by water and sewer lines.

Whatever happens going forward will be set against an ominous economic backdrop.

The Army Corps maintains a 14-foot-deep by 150-foot-wide channel down the length of the river to the Chesapeake Bay.

The river is designated by the Army Corps as a "moderate-use" channel. If the total freight dips below 1 million tons a year for a substantial amount of time, it could slip a level to "low-use," said Andrea Takash, a corps spokeswoman.

Such projects haven't received funding in years because of budgeting constraints, she said.

"It's a national program," Takash added. "The Corps of Engineers has to look at it from a national priority."

Falling below 1 million tons won't automatically trigger a lower designation, she said. The agency will remain in communication with the county to receive the context behind the numbers.

College to offer digital media studies degree

BATON ROUGE, La. -- South Louisiana Community College plans to offer an associate degree program in digital media design starting in the fall to replace its technical graphic design program.

College officials tell The Advocate (http://bit.ly/1knFKnq ) that students in the graphic design program can transfer into the associate degree program or complete the technical diploma option.

The Louisiana Board of Regents has approved the program and the college is awaiting final approval from its accrediting agency.

The program will teach technical skills in digital media, including courses in print and web design and digital video production.

It will include two tracks: an associate of applied science and a technical diploma track. Four certificate options will be offered in digital printer design, web design, digital video editing for 3-D art and a 3-D artist certificate.

Spain to unveil $8.6 billion stimulus package

MADRID -- Spain's prime minister says his government will unveil a stimulus package worth 6.3 billion euros ($8.6 billion) to boost competitiveness.

In another sign that the country is emerging from five years of economic hardship, Mariano Rajoy said his plan "aims to mobilize" 2.7 billion euros from the private sector and 3.4 billion euros from the public sector.

He said Saturday corporate tax would be cut from 30 percent to 25 percent.

Rajoy added that details will be revealed at a Cabinet meeting on Friday.

Standard & Poor's was the third credit rating agency to upgrade Spain's sovereign credit grade on May 23 although Spain is still saddled with a massive 26 percent unemployment rate.

Rajoy said Spain has created employment in the last two quarters.

Critics see lack of info at Vermont Yankee meeting

MONTPELIER, Vt. -- Critics of the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant say the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission provided insufficient information at a recent public meeting on the plant's 2013 performance.

"We feel the public was shortchanged by NRC's shifting the emphasis of the meeting to general information on decommissioning at the expense of focused discussion about significant deficiencies in management and operations at Entergy Vermont Yankee," said Clay Turnbull, a trustee and spokesman with the nuclear watchdog group New England Coalition.

Vermont Yankee's owners, subsidiaries of New Orleans-based Entergy Corp., announced last August that the plant would shut down permanently in late 2014, so much public attention has turned to decommissioning, or dismantling the reactor and restoring the site in Vernon, where the plant has operated since 1972.

Diane Screnci, a spokeswoman for the NRC's Northeast regional office, attended Wednesday's meeting in Brattleboro. She said the agency's presentation was designed to provide information the public wanted to hear.

"I think our opening remarks did cover both topics," she said, referring to decommissioning and the plant's 2013 performance. "Once we started taking questions, we did answer what was asked."

But she acknowledged that the presentation didn't cover all the findings from last year.

An inspection report for the third quarter of last year, from July to September, found several issues that the NRC labeled of "very low safety significance" but "more than minor."

Incidents included a diesel generator being run at about 130 percent of its rated load and workers being exposed to about twice the expected dose of radiation during one procedure.

In the radiation incident, the NRC said, "Inadequate work planning and control resulted in unplanned, unintended collective exposure due to conditions that were reasonably within Entergy's ability to control."

Turnbull, who attended the meeting, said in an email, "Nowhere in print, on a screen or verbally did NRC present the ten violations of 2013 to the public. The violations repeatedly point to management making poor decisions, poor project planning, and cutting costs at the expense of safety."

Vermont Yankee spokesman Robert Williams said the company didn't want to comment on the NEC concerns.

All the incidents listed were rated green, the lowest level on an NRC matrix rating problems of any significance. A green rating, unlike the higher levels, doesn't prompt stepped-up NRC inspections, Screnci said.

For a nuclear plant, though, Screnci said: "You'd want no inspection findings, none of any color."

Obama's boldest move on carbon comes with perils

WASHINGTON -- The new pollution rule the Obama administration announces Monday will be a cornerstone of President Barack Obama's environmental legacy and arguably the most significant U.S. environmental regulation in decades.

But it's not one the White House wanted.

As with other issues, the regulation to limit the pollution blamed for global warming from power plants is a compromise for Obama, who again finds himself caught between his aspirations and what is politically and legally possible.

It will provoke a messy and drawn-out fight with states and companies that produce electricity, and may not be settled until the eve of the next presidential election in 2016, or beyond.

"It's going to be like eating spaghetti with a spoon. It can be done, but it's going to be messy and slow," said Michael Gerrard, director of the Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University.

At the crux of the problem is Obama's use of a 30-year-old law that was not intended to regulate the gases blamed for global warming. Obama was forced to rely on the Clean Air Act after he tried and failed to get Congress to pass a new law during his first term. When the Republicans took over the House, the goal became impossible.

The new rule, as the president described it in a news conference in 2010, is another way of "skinning the cat" on climate change.

"For anybody who cares about this issue, this is it," Heather Zichal, Obama's former energy and climate adviser, said in an interview with The Associated Press. "This is all the president has in his toolbox."

The rule will tap executive powers to tackle the single largest source of the pollution blamed for heating the planet: carbon dioxide emitted from power plants. They produce about 40 percent of the electricity in the nation and about one-third of the carbon pollution that makes the U.S. the second largest emitter of greenhouse gases.

"There are no national limits to the amount of carbon pollution that existing plants can pump into the air we breathe. None," Obama said Saturday in his weekly radio and Internet address.

"We limit the amount of toxic chemicals like mercury, sulfur, and arsenic that power plants put in our air and water. But they can dump unlimited amounts of carbon pollution into the air. It's not smart, it's not safe, and it doesn't make sense," he said.

While Obama has made major reductions in carbon pollution from cars and trucks by increasing fuel efficiency, manufacturers cooperated after an $85 billion government bailout.

His rule requiring new power plants to capture some of their carbon dioxide and bury it underground, while significant, has little real-world impact because few new coal plants are expected to be built due to market conditions.

Both those rules also prescribed technological fixes or equipment to be placed on the automobile or power plant.

The rule released Monday, though, would allow states to require power plants to make changes such as switching from coal to natural gas or enact other programs to reduce demand for electricity and produce more energy from renewable sources.

They also can set up pollution-trading markets as 10 other states already have done to offer more flexibility in how plants cut emissions. Plans from states won't be due until 2016, but the rule will become final a year before.

That hasn't stopped the hoopla over the proposal.

Some Democrats worried about re-elections have asked the White House, along with Republicans, to double the length of the rule-making comment period, until after this November's elections.

The Chamber of Commerce said the rule would cost $50 billion to the economy and kill jobs. Harvard University said the regulation wouldn't just reduce carbon but also would have a beneficial side effect: cleansing the air of other pollutants.

Environmental groups, meanwhile, are taking credit for helping shape it and arguing it would create jobs, not eliminate them.

Rep. Nick Rahall, a Democrat from West Virginia, which gets 96 percent of its power from coal, said Thursday that while he didn't have the details, "from everything we know we can be sure of this: It will be bad for jobs." Rahall faces a difficult re-election in November.

Obama said such pessimistic views are wrong.

"Now, special interests and their allies in Congress will claim that these guidelines will kill jobs and crush the economy," Obama said in his address. "Let's face it, that's what they always say."

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy and other government officials have promoted the proposal's flexibility as way to both cut emissions and ensure affordable electricity. But that flexibility could backfire.

Some states, particularly those heavily reliant on fossil fuels, could resist taking action, leading the federal government to take over the program. That happened in Texas when it initially refused to issue greenhouse gas permits through another air pollution program.

Lawyers for states and industry also are likely to argue that controls far afield of the power plant violate the law's intent.

The rule probably would push utilities to rely more on natural gas because coal emits about twice as much carbon dioxide. The recent oil and gas drilling boom in the U.S. has helped lower natural gas prices and, by extension, electricity prices. But it still generally is cheaper to generate power with coal than with natural gas. Also, natural gas prices are volatile and can lead to fluctuations in power prices.

The rule will push the U.S. closer to the 17 percent reduction by 2020 it promised other countries at the start of Obama's presidency, it will fall far short of the global reductions scientists say are needed to stabilize the planet's temperature. That's because U.S. fossil-fueled power plants account for 6 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions.

Follow Dina Cappiello's environment coverage on Twitter at http://bit.ly/1owYCUh

Online gaming sites boost Foxwoods, Mohegan Sun

HARTFORD, Conn. -- At the online version of the Foxwoods Resort Casino, customers can play nearly every game and buy credits that build up reward points for merchandise and hotel stays at the real property. One thing they cannot do, at least for now, is wager money.

Foxwoods and its local rival, Mohegan Sun, the two biggest tribal-owned casinos in the United States, each have launched websites in case Internet gambling is legalized at the federal level or in their home state of Connecticut.

While prospects for changes to the law remain uncertain, the casinos have found the sites offer value as marketing tools for the giant resorts, sources of market data through user registrations and, at least in the case of Foxwoods, revenue through credit purchases.

"What we're finding is that it's actually a useful tool for building a database, getting our brand out there and connecting people to the property," said Rodney Butler, chairman of the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation, which owns and operates Foxwoods.

Foxwoods launched its "online casino" in January, through a partnership with GameAccount Network, and Butler said about 50,000 users have set up accounts. Users can buy credits to play longer or gain access to exclusive games. The credits add to reward points for use at stores, hotels and restaurants at Foxwoods.

Mohegan Sun teamed with Bally Technologies to begin offering an online poker site more than a year ago. It doesn't sell credits for money, but users can compete for hotel stays and gift vouchers. Chuck Bunnell, a spokesman for the Mohegan Tribe, said there is strong interest in the site and it has helped measure who likes to play and when.

The two tribes, who claim exclusive rights to casino-style gambling in Connecticut, say they want to be ready for Internet gaming.

Online gambling is legal in only three states — Nevada, New Jersey and Delaware — and similar legislation has been proposed in several other states. The federal government cracked down on online gambling in 2011 but said later that year that it's legal as long as it's permitted by the state.

Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and Lt. Gov. Nancy Wyman aren't interested in pursuing Internet gambling, said Juliet Manalan, a spokeswoman for Wyman.

Bunnell said the tribe has talked with lawmakers about changing the law, mainly at the federal level but also in Connecticut. He said Internet gambling is already taking place without regulations.

"If indeed the government wants to regulate it and offer it to appropriate people, we're ready and able to do that," Bunnell said.

Keith Whyte, executive director of the National Council on Problem Gambling, said the absence of regulations for online gaming places a huge responsibility on the growing amount of operators to protect customers. Butler said the Foxwoods site has technology that addresses concerns including age verification and where customers are playing.

Galveston OK's zoning change for new Balinese Room

GALVESTON, Texas -- The way is clear for developers to complete plans for a new 3,000-seat Balinese Room concert venue on the Galveston beachfront after the city's governing council approved a zoning change.

The change approved by the City Council a week ago will allow the proposed concert venue and restaurant to be built to a height of about 70 feet. Architect Michael Gaertner said the height was needed to accommodate the kind of equipment needed to produce the concerts.

Gaertner says the attraction at the site of the original Balinese Room, which Hurricane Ike demolished in 2008, would include four to five restaurants. Owner Scott Arnold said the design would reflect the character of the original and would book top musical performers.