Maritime industry: New Jersey responsible for own salt shortage
The maritime industry is suggesting New Jersey’s transportation commissioner concocted an elaborate snow job when he blamed a nearly century-old shipping law for bottling up a 40,000-ton supply of roadway salt.
The salt, which had been stuck in a Maine port and is needed for New Jersey’s roads this snowy winter, is now being shipped to Newark by a barge. But the barge will need three more trips to complete the delivery, the state Department of Transportation said.
“The barge was our Plan B,” department spokesman Steve Schapiro explained.
Last week, state Transportation Commissioner James Simpson complained the salt was stranded on the docks of Searsport, Maine, because the federal government had refused to grant New Jersey’s request for a waiver from the 1920 Merchant Marine Act. Also known as the Jones Act, the law bars foreign ships from making domestic deliveries to U.S. ports.
Simpson said he wanted the waiver so that a foreign-flagged ship, already in Searsport, could pick up New Jersey’s salt supplies and deliver them to the port of Newark. When the federal government denied the waiver request, finding it unwarranted, Simpson asserted that bureaucratic red tape was jeopardizing the lives of New Jersey motorists.
“I’m just ticked,” Simpson told reporters while discussing the salt crisis after a New Jersey Turnpike Authority board meeting Feb. 25. “This is a serious public safety issue.” (Wittkowski/Press of Atlantic City)
