National Maritime Salvage Response Organization: The Key to Timely Opening of America's Ports and Waterways

摘要

The United States has largely become a country of imports and very few exports, with as much as 90% of those imports arriving by ships into our ports and waterways. Keeping these ports and waterways free and clear is necessary for our economy to continue as more and more companies adopt 'just in time delivery' systems. The cost to the U.S. economy of a single day of closure in the Port of Los Angeles-Long Beach is estimated to range anywhere from $65 million to $150 million. A transportation security incident (TSI) similar to the attack that was carried out on the USS Cole in 2000 or the French Flagged tank ship Limburgh in 2002, could mean multiple days of port closures in some of the nations busiest ports. But it is not only the intentional damage to ships that wreak havoc on maintaining a free and clear port and waterway, natural disasters in the form of hurricanes or tsunamis could deposit obstructions to our ports and waterways, as evidenced by Hurricanes Katrina and Ike. This paper examines the response and recovery capabilities of the United States and those agencies chiefly responsible for maritime salvage; the U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Navy, and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. This examination and the case studies in this paper make the obvious clear, the U.S. Coast Guard is the agency in position to become the lead for a national maritime salvage response organization.