The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Maritime Administration (MARAD) has awarded nearly $12 million in grants to eight marine highway projects across the nation under the United States Marine Highway Program (USMHP).
One of these grants, $600,000 awarded to Lake Michigan Carferry, Inc., is to study the feasibility of converting the historic steamship SS Badger, the last coal-fired, passenger car ferry operating on the Great Lakes, to a zero-emission ferry vessel.
From the MARAD press release: The project will facilitate the safe, sustainable, and efficient transfer movement of three types of freight: traditional semi-trailers, oversize loads, and project cargo. The service offers customers a more economical and efficient transportation route which allows truckers to avoid a 350-mile trip through Chicago on the heavily congested I-90. As the last coal-powered freight and passenger ferry in the United States, this project will embrace clean energy and support the United States Marine Highway Program’s initiative of reducing emissions.
The SS Badger is a 410-foot-long coal-fired passenger and vehicle ferry operating in Lake Michigan on a four-hour shuttle service between Ludington, Michigan, and Manitowoc, Wisconsin. She began sailing in 1953 and to her admirers, she is a national treasure, while to her detractors, she is an environmental menace that until 2013 dumped more than 4 tons of toxic coal ash into Lake Michigan daily. The Badger had been operating on an EPA waiver that allowed it to continue dumping ash.
In 2013, the owners of the ship entered into a consent decree with the EPA to reduce the amount of ash being dumped and to end the dumping entirely by the beginning of the 2015 sailing season.
Six hundred K for a feasibility study? What happens if they take the money, say its not feasible and spend the rest on fast cars and hookers?
Whilst being flippant I don’t see why a study should be so expensive. I would be getting accountants to investigate grift.