§ 6-180. Preamble.

Part A:

All vessels engaged in foreign, coastwise, intercoastal or intracoastal trade and inland watercraft engaged in interstate or intrastate commerce shall be assessed fees as provided in this division to assist in defraying necessary and essential, direct and indirect, port, harbor and marine services to port and harbor users and other persons located in proximity to and affected by such activities due to the unique geographic and environmental characteristics of the Plaquemines Port, Harbor and Terminal District. Such fees and charges are to be used for the expenses of the administration and maintenance of the port and harbor, including administering, regulating and monitoring of the shipping traffic and handling of cargo in the harbor; supervising shipping of the port with the view of preventing collisions and fires; policing the river and riverfront and all navigable waterways, as well as the banks, battures, and contiguous and adjacent areas affected by port, harbor, terminal, water and marine activities; providing emergency service to vessels in distress, including extinguishing fires in vessels and equipment and in cargo of those vessels; and providing all such services for cargo handled in and upon the areas of the port's contiguous waterways and located in wharves and facilities upon the banks, battures, contiguous and adjacent areas in port-administered facilities; without additional charge except for the cost of supplies, materials and equipment expended by the Plaquemines Port, Harbor and Terminal District in the performance of such services.

Part B:

The port district does not now own or operate any docks, wharves or facilities within the tariff area of the district.

The volume of port activity centers around large bulk cargo transfer facilities for coal, grain, oil and other raw materials. The general pattern is that coal and grain come down the Mississippi River aboard barges and are transferred to outgoing vessels or are transferred directly from the barges onto outgoing ocean vessels.

Oil is gathered by pipelines and small inland barges from inshore oil production at Mississippi River facilities for loading upon barges or other vessels for shipping out of the district, generally upriver to the Mississippi River Valley and the Intra-coastal Waterway that accesses the Mississippi River at the Algiers Lock, the Industrial Canal Lock, and the Harvey Canal Lock. Oil also enters the district by ocean vessel.

A large volume of activity in the Port District is composed of many oceangoing vessels that come and go from the Gulf of Mexico up to the bulk terminal transfer facilities in the port mentioned above, and to the upriver deep water ports of the Mississippi River, which are New Orleans, South Louisiana, and Baton Rouge.

Vessels upbound to the upriver deep water ports frequently seek to anchor in the district while awaiting public or private berths at upstream deep water ports.

The offshore oil and inshore oil activities result in a number of oil service vessels plying the waters outside the deep water port area and taking cargo and personnel from such areas through the deep water port areas to non-deep-water wharves and facilities. However, the general areas of docking, berthing and personnel and small cargo transfers involved in this activity are generally at the Jump Basin at Venice on the West Bank of the Mississippi River. That basin is thus included herein for tariff imposition, though it does not meet the twenty-five-foot depth requirement, because the volume of those activities through the deep water navigational areas results in port services being rendered, and the point of berthing at the Jump Basin is the appropriate point to administer charges and regulate such activity, including vessel inspection, monitoring of cargo handled and other port activity.

In imposing the tariff provisions there is an effort to have Port District services, costs and expenses shared as equally as is possible among the various district users, commensurate with the tonnage of the vessels and cargoes transferred that can be charged for anchoring or berthing or for cargo transferred within the district. Although the Port District renders services to vessels that simply flow through this port to the other upriver ports, it is not deemed legally appropriate to subject such foreign, inland and intrastate vessel passages through the port to this tariff.

In this tariff there is an effort to impose a one-time charge for a given cargo being transferred within the district as it goes through the district. This is based on the premise that the volume of cargo transferred is a good measure and standard of indication of the port activity involved and services required from the Port District, and is thus a proper basis for imposing tariff charges on ships, vessels, boats, barges, wharves and facilities for the various port services rendered by the Port District hereafter described, resulting from such port activity as reflected in tons of cargo through the district.

In carrying out the duties imposed on it by the enabling legislation creating the Plaquemines Port, Harbor and Terminal District, the district provides reasonable tariff fee charges to defray the cost of regulation of facilities and services afforded, provided and rendered by the district in aid of interstate or foreign commerce, and the transfer of cargo through the district by transfer from and to vessels, facilities, wharves and barges used or offered for use by the shipping facilities to the public and to those vessels engaged in foreign and interstate commerce anchoring, docking and transferring cargo within the area of the Port District in the deep water areas thereof, as set forth in section 6-206 of this division.

Port District services in place and functioning are the operation of two (2) patrol/rescue/early fire response vessels; a ferry-boat that has built into it fire-fighting pumping capacity and which can be enhanced by the placing of additional fire-fighting pumping equipment with special emphasis on snorkel nozzles for marine fire fighting; high-speed mobile pumps that can be towed at high speed along the highways adjacent to the river to points of loading the same on the ferryboats or other, prelocated barges, supply vessels or other vessels under a fire plan in place in conjunction with the voluntary fire departments of the district so as to be available for marine, vessel, wharves and facilities fire fighting. The Port District also provides a twenty-four-hour-a-day marine communications network oriented to marine emergencies and current locations of Port District personnel and departmental persons, including commissioners who perform executive functions, the marine communications network facilities, fire and police protection services, and the altering, dispatching and implementing of the protective efforts of local fire units and volunteer fire units who have in place a marine response plan, including fire protection and emergency response plan through an agreement of the Port District with the U.S. Coast Guard and an agreement for a reciprocal fire plan involving the Port of New Orleans fire vessels for providing them to the district's vessels, wharves and facilities as early as possible in port emergencies. There are reciprocal fire aid plans with adjacent fire districts in emergency situations.

The very nature of some district services, communication, fire, emergency response and port police protection, is often on a standby basis and it is difficult to portion the same among port users with an advance knowledge of exactly how they will be needed and used.

However, in enacting the tariff provisions, some basic guidelines have been used, some of which are hereafter set forth, which are reflected in the tariff provisions.

There is a correlation between Port District activity and the registered tonnage of vessels or the amount of cargo tonnage vessels carry or transfer at wharves, docks or other transfer facilities.

Large oceangoing vessels are perceived as creating hazardous situations as a result of collisions and/or fire or sinking which involve greater numbers of crew members, enclosed places in which they may be entrapped, and areas of fire fighting that are more hazardous than an open, bulk transfer facility's wharf made from steel or concrete with no enclosed areas, yet which receives Port District services and especially so when there are oceangoing vessels wharfed or moored to them.

Open barges not habitated by crew members pose less of a threat to human life than do manned vessels, and push boats or tow boats are somewhere between unmanned barges and the heavily manned and confined quarters of oceangoing vessels. Port District facilities, wharves and docks receive general fire protection from landside similar to that furnished to non-maritime-oriented shore facilities.

Assessment of harbor tariff fees also takes into account section 6-205.1 of this division relative to barge fleeting requirement in the Mississippi River providing fleeting locations, the patrolling and regulation thereof, the proper mooring, and the regulations of the tugs and pushboats and inspection thereof incident to the barge cargo and the interface of such navigational and operational activities with the large ocean vessels operating within the district and through the district to and from upriver deep water ports.

The Federal Water Pollution Control Act (33 U.S.C. 1321) and the Hazardous Materials Transportation Act of the United States, and federal regulations issued pursuant thereto (see 49 U.S.C. 1801 et seq.; 46 U.S.C. 2101; supplementary thereto, also see 46 C.F.R., parts 151-154 (1985) and amendments and supplements thereto) regulate and classify the different transportation risks of different cargoes. The large volume of petroleum liquid cargoes and their derivatives passing through the Port District are hazardous cargo.

The liquid cargo transferred within the Port District is volatile. An additional problem requiring port services is the serious spill/pollution possibility.

Crude oil and petroleum products such as benzene, butane, fuel oil, heating oil, gasoline, liquid petroleum gas, naphtha, propane, xylene, and similarly hazardous volatile cargo do pose serious fire and pollution problems, both when being transferred from a terminal to a vessel and in the event of vessel collisions. Even if the products do not catch fire, there is still the resulting pollution of the waters of the Port District.

A vessel collision involving coal or grain poses no serious pollution problem, as the coal or grain will simply sink to the bottom of the Mississippi River.

The foregoing factors are taken into account to the extent that they can be quantified and estimated and related to users' needs and tariffs collected, in an equitable way in the apportionment of the Port District tariffs.

These tariffs are imposed pursuant to the enabling legislation for the purpose of meeting expenses attendant upon the supervision of the district and the execution of the regulations and providing for the proper accommodation of vessels at the Port District, and are devised to further the safety of vessels and to facilitate their use of the harbor. There is a monitoring of district revenues and services rendered to an ongoing basis to keep them in substantial equal balance.

There are imposed harbor fees based upon the transfer of cargo at privately operated wharves located on the navigable waterways of the district as hereafter defined. While these are privately operated and financed facilities located upon properties that are private, parts of such wharves and facilities, in fact, are located on publicly owned property or property impressed with rights of public servitude or usage inherent on such battures or banks and the beds of navigable rivers or waters impressed with the rights of public use as may be required for purposes of commerce, navigation and other purposes, including the air space above such areas (R.S. 9:1102.2). The management, control and jurisdiction of such properties and these areas of operation and river bank occupancy have been conveyed upon the Port District by its enabling legislation and certain general laws of the State of Louisiana. It is this incidence of public ownership, control and regulations, and the services rendered by the district pursuant to United States Supreme Court cases, United States statutes, the Port District's enabling legislation, and the following set-forth property laws of Louisiana, that are the bases on which harbor fees are imposed on such facilities, as well as for the services they receive. Confer: Louisiana Civil Code articles 448, 450, 452, 455, 456, 458, 460 and 665. Confer: R.S. 34:1351 et seq., (the Port District enabling legislation); 9:1101, 9:1102.1, 9:1102.2 and 9:1107. Confer: The State Waterbottoms Management Act, R.S. 41:1701 et seq., wherein at section 41:1705 the state management procedures have been relegated to the deep water port areas, of which the Plaquemines Port, Harbor and Terminal District is such a deep water port facility.

(Ord. No. 201, § 1, 9-20-78; Ord. No. 700 § I, 10-15-86)

Reference is also made to requirements of laws and regulations that require ever-expanding port, harbor and marine services, regulations and inspections by such districts at local government levels, such as Rivers and Harbors Act; Ocean Dumping Act; National Environmental Policy Act; Safe Drinking Water Act; Clean Water Act; Noise Control Act; Clean Air Act; Occupational Safety and Hazards Act; Toxic Substances Control Act; Federal Pesticide Acts; Coastal Zone Management Acts, federal and state; energy regulations; Solid Waste Disposal Act.

Editor's note

The inclusion of a portion of Ord. No. 201 as § 6-180 hereof has been at the editor's discretion, as said ordinance did not specify manner of inclusion. Rather than setting out the preamble to the zoning ordinance, which preamble had originally been included as a part of this section, the editor has added a reference to where the preamble is printed in this volume. The editor has also included part B of the preamble, as promulgated by Ord. No. 700, § I.