September 2, 2013 THE WATERWAYS JOURNAL THIRTEEN

Insist on Strong Ties

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Safety(Continued from Page 7)

temperatures up to 20 degrees,” said Wiesend.

Another important safety initiative is AEP’s ongoing replacement of all its winches with patented non-kinking Yo-Yo winches from Patterson. Wiesend said the company buys between 200 and 300 a year; each boat carries four winches.

A very important safety system is the ORCA DF-101 man-overboard signal sys-tem, the same one used by the U.S. Navy. Wiesend said AEP tried three or four oth-er systems before deciding on the ORCA.

But AEP doesn’t rely on technology alone; a close-buddy system is mandatory, so that no deck crewmember is ever alone. If anyone should fall overboard, his or her buddy is there to yank him back out. After any overboard incident, the crewmember is pulled off duty for 24 hours while his or her recovery is monitored.

As of the end of August, said Wiesend, AEP has gone 293 days without a spill of any kind.

Zero Discharge Zones

Some river companies are deciding that when it comes to wastewater, the best discharge is no discharge at all.

SkimOil Inc. has introduced its new-est VGP solutions evaporator MarineVAP System that can evaporate bilge and gray water, and even treated black water. Ac-cording to SkimOil president Roscoe Mc-Williams, the new system allows any boat to become a “no discharge zone.”

McWilliams jokingly calls the new on-

ley’s team of engineers to add such energy-saving appliances as a com-mercial-size convection oven, Traeger flameless pellet grills that eliminate the use of propane and open flames, and an advanced water purification system that provides the freshest water possible and eliminates the use of plastic water bottles. All gray water is captured and evaporated, which eliminates discharge overboard.

Much effort was spent on the crew’s quarters to make them as comfortable as they could be, including additional sound-deadening material and all-LED lighting. In fact, LED lights were in-stalled everywhere on the vessel, making the Donna Rushing the first towboat on the inland waterways to have 100 percent LED lighting. Now, two years later, “we have not changed one single bulb or fix-ture,” said Brantley.

These changes and others, includ-ing electric hand dryers, wheelhouse steps and handrails instead of a ladder, remote-controlled capstan, man-over-board devices, and redesigned guard chains, to name a few, have all been in-stituted on AEP’s other boats, Brantley said. Also, the measures taken to prevent spillage of any kind into the river have resulted in 293 days without a spill, as of this writing, “and that is for the en-tire company, including AEP’s shipyard in Belle Chasse, La.,” he added.

“We use the Donna Rushing as a pro-totype for our ‘Commitment to Safety, the Environment and our Employees,’ and continually look for ways to raise the bar whenever we can.”

board MarineVap evaporator “Bubba-proof,” since it does not require moni-toring and refilling, as the earlier model bilgeVAP electric evaporators did.

McWilliams told The Waterways Jour-nal, “The new MarineVap is the culmina-tion of everything we learned from the early BilgeVap models, which did re-quire some care and feeding. If a boat can transfer its marine wastewaters into a tank—the MarineVap can use that as a process tank from which it automatically feeds itself. The earlier BilgeVap was and is very effective, but it’s a batch system that required refilling, whereas the Mari-neVap is a totally automated system with its own feed pump and automated purge and dump valves.

McWilliams said the biggest challenge of earlier systems was to handle the soaps

left behind when the system had evapo-rated hundreds or thousands of gallons of soapy water. “Now that the MarineVap is totally automated, it can run for weeks or even months without attention,” he said.

“The MarineVAP is built vertically, taking less floor space,” said McWilliams. “It evaporates water at the same rate the water is being fed into it, making it an ‘on-demand’ evaporator that starts evaporat-ing within two minutes of starting up.”

Southern Towing port engineer Sam Lewis is enthusiastic about the no-dis-charge concept, although he credits com-pany founder and president Bill Stegbauer with providing the initial push. Southern Towing has seven no-discharge boats now, Lewis said, and is gradually retrofitting all its boats with MarineVap systems.

“Not only is it better for the environ-ment,” Lewis told The Waterways Jour-nal, “but since we recycle all our own wa-ter, it means less downtime to stop and take on water. There’s a little bit of extra work upfront at installation, but it’s well worth it.”

Safety Collaboration At ACL

Many companies are talking about safety and environmental stewardship as a process of continuous education and changing of the company culture, start-ing at the top.

Jerry Torok, director of safety and reg-ulatory compliance at American Com-mercial Lines, told The Waterways Journal, “Once our safety message was developed, ACL’s senior leadership was actively engaged in delivering it. ACL

See SafetY Page 14