Jim Oberstar: Safety is the issue with this boat

Kersten left important facts out of column on Delta Queen.

By Jim Oberstar

Last update: November 19, 2007 - 5:47 PM

Star Tribune columnist Katherine Kersten should learn that you can disagree with someone on an issue without omitting key facts.

Kersten is correct in her Nov. 15 column ("Could Oberstar sink the majestic Delta Queen?") that I do not support a special exemption to allow an 81-year-old wooden boat to continue carrying passengers on overnight cruises. The Delta Queen is a lovely, elegant vessel; but the risk of a catastrophic fire is too great to allow it to continue carrying overnight passengers. Unfortunately, this is where Kersten's attention to accuracy ends.

She suggests that I once supported the Delta Queen's exemption but changed my mind at the request of the Seafarers Union. This is wrong. My office informed Kersten that I vocally opposed including this exemption in the Coast Guard reauthorization bills of 1998 and 2006 but supported the legislation's final passage; overall, they were good bills. Kersten ignored these facts and wrote a column that appears to be a cynical, political hatchet job.

In 1904, the paddle wheeler General Slocum caught fire, killing more than 1,000 people in one of the nation's worst maritime disasters. Wooden river boats like the Delta Queen are the reason the Coast Guard began regulating passenger vessels on inland waterways. As chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, it is my job to make sure that the Delta Queen remains a living link to a bygone era of riverboat travel and not an example of how ignoring safety regulations can lead to disaster.

Jim Oberstar, D-Minn., is a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

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