TRAFFIC CONTROL

A $1.1 million vessel traffic control tower erected near the Jesse Fontenot Memorial Boat Landing in Berwick is enhancing the view U.S. Coast Guard officials have of the Intracoastal Waterway.

Located near mile marker 99 in the Gulf Intracoastal, the tower provides additional camera vantage points, which capture images westward along the Intracoastal Waterway, southward along the Lower Atchafalaya River and northward toward Berwick Bay.

“It was all part of our project to expand our traffic service center. The development of this tower provided additional vantage points. There are several cameras mounted on the towers. We are able to utilize the tower to see what we needed to see in order to monitor vessel traffic control,” said U.S. Coast Guard Marine Safety Unit Lt. Commander Rick Paciorka.

In order to provide increased situational awareness for the U.S. Coast Guard vessel traffic controllers at Vessel Traffic Service Berwick Bay, the tower will be equipped with a TERMA radar and an automatic identification system transceiver to update and improve the overall port and waterway safety, he said.

To acquire the land, Captain Terry Gilbreath, the commanding officer of U.S. Coast Guard Marine Safety Unit in Morgan City, had to work closely with the St. Mary Parish Government and the St. Mary Parish school system to arrive at an agreement for a 20-year, no-cost lease.

“The land was leased by the school board. It was given to the school board back before Louisiana became a state,” Paciorka said. “It was set aside many years ago for educational and safety purposes.”

In addition, permission was granted from the Town of Berwick’s mayor office. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers gave the Coast Guard its consent to cross the levee to access the parcel of land, where the tower is located.

The entire project took 16-months to complete. The MSU Morgan City worked diligently with contractors from General Dynamics and Pyramid Towers, who were contracted through the Coast Guard’s Maintenance and Logistics Command.

The Coast Guard’s Office of Navigation and project engineers from the Command and Control Engineering Center had a hand in constructing, financing and designing the tower.

The Coast Guard views the VTS as an extremely important safety asset in the Morgan City, Paciorka said. By arranging vessel traffic in a safe and organized manner, VTS Berwick Bay not only protects structures such as the triple-bridge complex spanning Berwick Bay, but it also reduces vessel-to-vessel accidents that result in personal causalities, property losses and/or environmental damages that may require the waterway to close causing millions of dollars to be lost in revenues.

Paciorka said this project was just one of the many expansion MSU Morgan City will make in the next few weeks.

Photo courtesy of Richard Eberhardt, The Waterways Journal * Electrical Material Officer Howie Fields and Lt. Commander Richard Paciorka, chief of the Waterways Management Department, stand near the newly completed, $1.1 million vessel traffic tower in Morgan City.