installation on all vessels used in the Houston ship channel. We have been very successful in getting this done. As a result, I think the records will show that the Houston ship channel is a lot safer place to operate at this time. The captain of the port in Houston, former captain of the port, Capt. Al Rose, or Comdr. Al Rose, compiled figures that you asked about of Mr. Ellis. They have a chart of several years' operation with all accidents, vessels involved and probable causes. Now, this was seen by a few members of industry, not-we weren't supposed to see it, but we happened to see it one day. But it is very interesting. I suggest you all obtain a copy of this from the Houston captain reports office. Mr. CLARK. Since you have seen it, Bill, can you tell us approximately how many collisions there have been on the river? Mr. PATTON. It has been about a year, over a year since I have seen this, and I think it was a 2-year period, one year and then another year. And I would say something like 50 accidents a year that—if I remember right, that could be varying, but-my concensus of it was that the majority of the accidents were caused by pilot error, by human error. There is testimony in some hearings we had in Houston on the Corps of Engineers on enlarging the Houston ship channel or either putting another channel alongside the present channel, as far as Morgan's Point, that the unwieldy, bulky ships were had to play chicken when they passed in the ship channel. They would head for each other and at the right moment they would hit the bank and bounce around each other. This testimony is already in the record in several different places, and I imagine it will be put in the record here. You all mentioned awhile ago the negative attitude. That's all I have gotten out of people that I have talked to is a negative attitude toward this bill. It has so much duplicity and over regulation applied in it that it creates a negative attitude. To get down to a few paragraphs in this section 2, paragraph 2, this already is in Public Law 9263, which is one of the best laws we have written lately. Paragraph 3, tow traffic. It has been controlled on the Houston Ship Channel ever since World War II. The Coast Guard has always stopped traffic under hazardous conditions, ammunition ships moving in and out of the port, large, overwieldy drilling rigs coming out on barges, they would stop traffic or regulate traffic, and I don't think we have ever had any problem in that respect. Establish vessel size, speed limitations: Port of Freeport has a 5mile-an-hour speed limit enforced by the Corps of Engineers. And I would like to quote you one case of the Coast Guard overregulating in this field. I have been going up the ship channel in a light boat, empty boat without any barges, 45-foot boats, relatively small boat, and I was following a Liberty ship, and because this boat was traveling about 9 miles an hour, which is about 4 or 5 miles an hour faster than its towing speed, it was creating a little wake. And the Coast Guard vessel came alongside and told me to slow down, I was creating too much wake and did not know that the speed limit on the Houston Ship Channel was a hundred rpms. And I wondered what a Liberty ship would do if it turned up a hundred rpms. In this paragraph, paragraph 3, subparagraph 4, restricted vessel operation in a hazardous area-the Houston ship channel is not—a ship cannot be maneuvered in the Houston Ship Channel with their own apparatus. They do not have maneuvering rudders. They are high-speed steering systems. They are not compatible to a narrow ditch at all. I think you might not want to restrict ships under this law because when you do that you are really going to hurt the Port of Houston. This paragraph 5, that's paragraph 5 under-I guess paragraph 5. Now, this could open up a hardship on certain operations such as many ships operating in and out of the Atchafalaya River where there are no State pilots available. I think we have created an undue burden on any operation. If a man has a pilot's license, he should be able to navigate that without any additional expense of hiring a State pilot, and I think that's what this applies. Now, on paragraphs 6, 7, and 8, I have no quarrel with these, but I think it's because I'm not familiar with the-all the ramifications involved. In discussing this with some of the port people, I understand they do have some objections to it. Now, this section 5 on reasonable rules, I would like to be repetitive, and I feel like Mr. Ellis about the-now, on the positive recommendations, I would recommend for the Houston ship channel_a surveillance and advisory system to where if I left a dock, that I could call the central place and get a position, probable speed, size or any information pertinent to safe navigation of the Houston ship channel. There is such blind bends and places where there are so many background lights that you can't determine what lights what. Even though a man has all the navigation lights in the world, sometimes you can't pull them out of all these background lights, but if you knew that man was coming, you might make some arrangement to either slow down or stop until you are sure the way is cleared to go. I think the surveillance and reporting would be the best thing you could do for the port of Houston. I would like to comment on Mr. Brooks' comments about the large vessels sucking the little boats out the slips. I was in his office about 2 years ago, and that was the same thing he told me then. So obviously it hasn't changed, but I would like to invite Mr. Brooks or any interested party to ride one of these big tows through the Bolivar area and see what these people are talking agout. We had a case in Freeport in a very congested area at the Surfside Bridge of a large tow coming down the channel, and without any problem at all, and all at once a little sailboat came up right in the middle of the channel, and he had to beach his tow to keep from running over this sailboat. And the sailboat went by, and a guy standing there with his hand on his hip, and said, "Hey, Captain, don't you know a sailboat has got the right-of-way?" And this guy did several thousand dollars' worth of damage to the bulkhead to avoid running over this sailboat, and that's some of the problems the towboat operators have in some of these channels. End of my report. Mr. CLARK. Thank you very much. That's another negative statement you gave us, and we can't make a satisfactory bill pattern by negative statements. We had hoped that the witnesses would be able to give us something that we can tie up the loose ends with so that we can make the bill better, not to just throw it out, because we are going to get legislation this year one way or another. The next witness is Rudy Teichman from Josephine Towing. Mr. CLARK. You have nothing? Do you want to submit a statement for the record later on? Mr. TEICHMAN. We can't hear you back here, sir. Mr. CLARK. Would you like to submit a statement for the record later on? Mr. TEICHMAN. I'm new in the towboat industry, and I would just like to sit back here and listen a little bit. Mr. CLARK. All right. Thank you very much. Our next witness isdo we have a spokesman for Todd's shipyards? Mr. ELLIS. They are going to give it in Houston tomorrow. Mr. CLARK. All right. Thank you. Mr. Kelley Leonard from Biehl & Co., Galveston. A VOICE. He is not here. Mr. CLARK. Is he going to give a statement tomorrow, do you know? A VOICE. Not in Houston, sir. Mr. CLARK. Kelso Marine, Inc. Anyone? Mr. SMITH. Yes, sir. Mr. CLARK. For the record would you give your name and your address and who you are with? Mr. SMITH. Yes, sir. Mr. CLARK. We do appreciate your coming. STATEMENT OF CHARLES SMITH, PRACTICING ATTORNEY, ON BEHALF OF KELSO MARINE Mr. SMITH. Thank you, sir. My name is Charles Smith, and I am a practicing attorney in Galveston. I'm here this morning really for Kelso Marine, but also as an individual practicing lawyer in this area. As a little background, my experience in this particular field, I have been practicing law in Texas for 20 years, all of it here in Galveston, except for 2 years I was assistant U.S. attorney on the admiralty desk in Houston. Peculiar to admiralty practice, the U.S. attorney's office in Houston has its own admiralty section. It's the only one other than New York and San Francisco that has this. So I was exposed to quite a bit of representing the United States in admiralty proceedings. I have been president of the chamber of commerce in Galveston, 1960 and 1961. And I have appeared in many instances before the Coast Guard in disciplinary hearings representing masters, mates, and pilots and other unlicensed personnel in these proceedings. Unfortunately I probably have to talk-I am going to talk negatively about the bill, and since there is some-the statement has been made that legislation of this type will be passed, I would like to make my remarks as constructive as possible. Generally I would like to observe that in advising clients. I have found certainty in the law to be the most important thing in getting compliance. Clients come to me and they ask me what is the law? They want to know what is the law. And quite frankly it is difficult to be able to advise a client in this particular growing field as there are many agencies that have jurisdiction and take jurisdiction or exert jurisdiction. By what authority, you may be trying to clear up, but still they take jurisdiction. And the lawyer cannot sometimes find all these regulations. You will have to specialize in this particular field, I would think, to be able to understand it all. And when you get to that specialization, not many of the operators are affluent enough to really employ these attorneys for all the appeal procedures that possibly are available to them. We speak of appeal procedures, and from Washington's viewpoint, that's pretty simple, but actually the administrative procedure act doesn't work too well in the hinterlands, shall we say? It is a difficult thing for a person who-it gets into the toils of an appeal from a violation, in this community, to find really what his procedures are. If he has to employ an attorney, and I appreciate that this might make some work for us, but it's not good economics sometime. I would tend to hope-or I would hope that in this bill you might find some administrative procedures that are not as complicated as maybe title 5 and title 7 are; something simple in here. What appeals do we have? The gentleman on the end mentioned that you have your appeals. To whom? It doesn't say in the act, it-if we are under the administrative procedures act, it doesn't work too well down this way, gentlemen. That's all I can tell you. It just doesn't work too well. There is too much red tape to it. The second thing, I had given to me a statement on behalf of the American Waterway Operators, Inc., made before your subcommittee by Mr. Robert J. Hughes. His observation that under title 33, the Corps of Engineers' jurisdiction is about as broad as you possibly can get, and I have run across this a number of times in representing people doing dredging, for instance, or extending piers into the water. It appears to me that implementation of the Corps of Engineers' authority under the present law would be sufficient. Overlapping jurisdictions bring not uniform application of the restrictions. You get-actually you get, and we have it, Federal agencies fighting Federal agencies. I have been involved as a U.S. attorney in trying to resolve conflicts once in awhile between two agencies that didn't interpret the law the same way. I have been involved representing private clients that get between two agencies and there is no appeal from that. These are the things that I would like to specifically complain about in the bill. We have had two of them talking about the issue, reasonable rules and regulations subject to chapters 5 and 7, title 5. Well, I'm assuming title 5 is the Appellate Procedure Act. But for laymen, for people that are not schooled in the law, to try to provide and understand this, it's too expensive for them, really. Now, may I ask a question about this, really, because I-the chairman's statement indicated that this really is somewhat of an effort to get the Coast Guard on the statutory basis rather than just some preliminary basis. Could you expand just a little bit on that so I could understand it a little bit better? Mr. CLARK. This is true. This is what we are trying to do. Mr. CORRADO. The Coast Guard authority previously was under an Executive order under the Magnuson Act, and the Coast Guard derived its harbor safety from those two documents, and it was confined to, ostensibly, anyway, sabotage and emergency situations. It has been in effect since 1950. It's not permanent. It's a long-term temporary authority. This is at least in part the purpose of this legislation before us. It is to freeze this temporary authority into something permanent for the Coast Guard. That's not the entire purpose of the bill, but that really was the underlying initial basis. It was the foundation for this present legislation. I don't think it would be accurate to say at this stage of the game now that this bill is aimed just at that. It's obviously an attempt to get some more permanent control over marine traffic and the structures along the waterways and its relationship to the environmental problem is apparent. Does that answer your question? Mr. SMITH. That's part of it, but the other part I would like to ask is since the Corps of Engineers has this delegated responsibility under 33-title 33-why isn't it expanded there within the Corps of Engineers since they already exercise this jurisdiction? Mr. CORRADO. I don't think we got your name. Mr. SMITH. Charles Smith, S-m-i-t-h. Pretty simple. Mr. CORRADO. We have got a big real estate developer up in Washington by the same name. In 10 days of hearings in this bill last year, of course, this problem was raised then. We called in the Corps of Engineers to elucidate this-to clarify the problem for us. They said on the telephone that there is no problem, "we see no problem and we don't even want to testify." We insisted that they send a witness in and get something on the record, so they sent a Lieutenant Colonel Garyer up, and he said the Corps of Engineers sees no problem here. We see no overlap problem, no jurisdictional problem. And the Coast Guard, of course, from the beginning has said the same thing. Well, all the industry people trooped in during this 10 days of testimony and said just the opposite. So it gave us quite a bit of a problem. But what do you do when the two agencies involved say there is no overlap problem? In an attempt to solve this, when we redrafted this bill, we insisted on the insertion of section 6, which in our opinion solves this problem, this overlap problem, if indeed there ever was one. The two agencies involved say there isn't one. I think reasonably you have to believe what they say because they are the ones involved, but even if there is a problem we think section 6 is going to take care of it. Mr. SMITH. Well, I can see the reason for section 6, and I think this illustrates maybe the problem of the practitioner, just like your problem, is when you have a conflict between two agencies, and we do, and you do, that is exactly what people that are operators get into. The Coast Guard might say that you have got to do it a certain way and the Corps of Engineers say you have got to do it a certain way, and they conflict. There is nowhere to resolve that conflict. The operator doesn't know what to do. And I think this, quite sincerely on my part, is one of the most important things to all of these people, and to us in trying to apply the law. You can pass all the laws in the world, but if the people do not accept them and understand them, they will not do any good. And I have seen this, and you have seen it. So the simplification of this whole thing, I would speak to; especially I would like to ask, for instance, if you did go into this, would the Coast Guard possibly issue-they will issue regulations, I'm sure, would there be a division within it, or would you envision one that would give, say, like they do in Internal Revenue Service, interpretive regulations or |