Curio #258 | Who wants to kill Mr. Jones? A daily curious fact from Justin Kitch, Curious CEO Recently the Department of Transportation in New Jersey, enduring the worst winter on record, desperately needed more road salt to prevent highway deaths. (See a recent Curio on the road salt shortage.) 40,000 tons of salt became available in Maine, with a giant empty cargo ship sitting at the port. But they couldnt use the ship. Thats because it was flagged under the Marshall Islands and a 90-year-old law, called the Jones Act, forbids any ship from transporting goods between two U.S. cities that is not American owned, built and operated. The Jones Act is also why surplus natural gas from the Gulf Coast cant be shipped to the energy-hungry East Coast--since few capable tankers exist that that arent partially built in places like Japan and South Korea. So the gas sits there, calls grow louder for more environmentally risky pipelines, and U.S. shipbuilders have no reason to build the most efficient or environmentally safe tankers. Back to the salt--it had to travel on a smaller vessel, on three separate gas-guzzling round trips. Meanwhile lawmakers refuse to change a law that is rooted in maritime tradition from the 1600s, for fear of being labelled as Un-American. Wait, could there finally be an issue that all political persuasions--blue, red, green, tea, whatever--can agree upon?
Posted on: Thu, 20 Mar 2014 21:15:06 +0000
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