Congressman: don’t dry dock riverboats

Monday, June 2, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.

U.S. Coast Guard officials said that would mean rewriting regulations on safety inspections for such large passenger vessels, a move that could also affect gambling riverboats in other states.

Weller said his goal is to ensure safety "while at the same time protecting economic concerns, the jobs of thousands of riverboat employees and, of course, the Illinois taxpayers."

Coast Guard regulations require an out-of-water inspection every five years for boats like the ones in Illinois' gambling fleet, which are just getting old enough to face the deadline. The only dry docks big enough for most of those boats are in New Orleans. That means a trip down the Mississippi River and back - putting boats out of service for six to 12 weeks counting inspection and repair time, officials estimate.

State gambling regulators, casino owners and others worry that could cost millions of dollars in layoffs for riverboat employees, reduction in gambling tax revenue for state and local governments, and losses for investors.

Empress Casino officials in Joliet tried to resolve the problem with an unusual underwater inspection of the Empress I on May 19, but Coast Guard officials said it wasn't a good enough substitute.

The owners faced an August deadline to send the boat to New Orleans, leaving them with only one vessel during the busy summer months. But Weller stepped in with a request to Coast Guard officials in Washington, and the inspection deadline was moved to May 31, 1998.

The Casino Rock Island had already won a one-year extension on their March inspection deadline, so now eight Illinois riverboats face inspections in 1998.

Weller said he hopes to meet with Coast Guard officials soon to discuss alternatives, saying he will leave the specifics up to riverboat and Coast Guard experts. Empress Casino officials said they want to use developing technology, perhaps similar to the underwater inspection they tried in May.

"We don't want this just to be putting off the inevitable," said Mary Phalen, an Empress spokeswoman. "We want to be able to stay and continue operations while the inspection is being done."

Coast Guard regulations were changed about 10 years ago to allow underwater inspections in lieu of dry docking for some ships, but large passenger vessels were excluded because of "the large number of lives involved," said Cmdr. Geoff Powers, chief of the vessel compliance division in Washington.

Powers said there are two significant hurdles:

- developing a procedure that provides a better view than the murky, limited picture inspectors got from the May 19 experiment, so the Coast Guard is comfortable certifying the ship;

- changing regulations so the Coast Guard can accept such an inspection, a complicated and often lengthy process.

"That's what they're going to need eventually to make it happen the way they want," Powers said.

A change in the rules would affect riverboats in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa and Louisiana, as well as some boats in Missouri, said Adrienne M. Levatino, executive director of the Illinois Casino Gaming Association, which represents eight of the state's 10 riverboat operators.