RIVER WORKERS QUESTION SAFETY OF CASINO SITES

Riverboat casino operators competing for a gaming license in Cape Girardeau have focused their lobbying efforts at city leaders.

But persons who have spent decades working on the Mississippi River contend there are serious safety and navigation concerns with both proposed riverboat sites.

"From a river person's point of view, neither one of the sites is very good from a safety standpoint," said Bill Busch, who last year retired after more than 30 years with the Army Corps of Engineers.

"Riverboat pilots have said they will have trouble navigating with the added lights of a casino and boats sticking into the channel," Busch said.

Boyd Gaming has proposed docking a riverboat casino just north of the Broadway gate at the floodwall. Lady Luck has envisioned its boat at a site adjacent to St. Vincent's Seminary, north of the Missouri Dry Dock.

Woody Rushing, Cape Girardeau's own "Old Man of the River" with a river career spanning nearly six decades, said he doubts the Corps will approve either riverboat docking site.

"The big thing is safety," Rushing said. "If you take a riverboat with 1,500 or 2,000 passengers and crew, plus the crew on a towboat, it only takes one mishap and it's going to be a big one."

Lady Luck has proposed an alternate mooring site in front of its proposed 200-room hotel situated south of the dry dock. That location is far preferable to the other two sites, said Busch.

Gary Heisel, project coordinator for Lady Luck's development, said the company has had several conversations with Corps officials and towboat pilots to ensure a safe mooring site.

"We picked the site we did because we know the hazards of being in the channel," Heisel said. "Once we talked with river pilots and Corps officials, you couldn't give me the Boyd site."

But Maunty Collins, senior vice president and director of operations for the central region of Boyd Gaming, said it's impossible to determine whether a site is acceptable until the Corps has a chance to fully consider the gaming companies' engineering plans.

"After the city council recommends an operator, that would be the time when we would take our drawings to our engineers to draw up blueprints for the Corps," Collins said. "We have attempted to meet with some of the river pilots.

"Our intention is to sit down with those guys and let them explain to us any problems they foresee so we can address those."

Collins said that in preliminary conversations, Corps officials have not given Boyd officials "any red lights" about their project.

"We feel we can work with them," he said. "We had engineers months ago looking at this thing, and they didn't raise any flags."

Gary Lee is the project manager for the Corps of Engineers Regulatory Branch for eastern Missouri. He said the Boyd company has not contacted his office.

Evelyn Boardman of Cape Girardeau said the Boyd group met with the Corps Sept. 26, 1993. "They said our site is fine and that our boat would not stick out too far in the water," she said. "All they said was to watch out for debris."

Boardman said she received a call Friday night from Dan Davis, Boyd Group consultant, who told her of the Corps meeting and what was said.

"Lady Luck has come to us on two different occasions with a broad-concept plan," Lee said. "They've given us more information, but there still have been no applications for a permit."

Lee said safety is the most important issue that must be resolved in the permit process.

"We do not want a boat out there that has a possibility of causing injury to someone," he said. "The next thing we look at are impacts on navigation, then environmental concerns and any impact on wetlands."

A possible alternate docking site could be at Sloan's Creek north of the Boyd site and the floodwall, where a harbor could be built to keep a riverboat out of the river channel.

But that area is well out of the downtown area, which Boyd officials have lauded as one of their project's strengths.

Also, negotiation for that property apparently already has started between the landowners and Lady Luck representatives.

Heisel denied that any property has been purchased by Lady Luck, but he conceded there have been "preliminary talks about some of the property in that area."

Heisel said if Lady Luck purchased the tract it would be to provide some type of development for the city: a park, for example, that would be unrelated to gaming operations.

He refused to say whether the company was specifically trying to shut Boyd out of trying to secure an alternate docking site for its riverboat.

Lee said most of the safety concerns won't be addressed fully until the gaming companies make application with the Corps.

That process will trigger a series of meetings with interested parties -- the U.S. Coast Guard, the Cape Girardeau Main Street Levee District, members of the River Industry Action Committee (RIAC), and other regulatory agencies.

Lee said RIAC, which is comprised of bargeline operators in the upper reaches of the Mississippi and its tributaries, is an important group in the process.

"They know the river better than anybody," he said. "They know how those tows can be maneuvered, and we rely heavily on their experience."

RIAC Chairman Buddy Compton of St. Louis said his office has not been contacted by either Cape Girardeau gaming operation.

"If they want approval, they should contact somebody in the RIAC," Compton said. "The river industry would be held responsible for any incident, and we're not going to sign off on something that would put us in a compromising position.

"I'm all for development and seeing thriving industry along the river, but not at expense of the loss of life or injuries."

Compton said he thought the best docking site would be the farthest one upstream from the bridge. "The approach to the bridge is extremely critical, and we don't need to contend with a riverboat casino sitting there," he said.

Everett Johnson of Gordonville is a past chairman of RIAC. He is a retired, 46-year veteran river pilot.

Johnson agreed that the Boyd site at the foot of Broadway is preferable to the Lady Luck primary site near the bridge. But he said Lady Luck's alternate site is the safest of the three.

Rushing agreed.

"There's no way, I believe, the Corps will allow them to go in there," he said of Lady Luck's primary docking site. "It will be a well-lighted facility, and when a barge operator comes down facing that bridge, all those lights will be a distraction."

But Rushing said he saw no problem with Lady Luck's alternate site. "Once you clear the bridge, the current goes back into the middle of the river again," he said.

Johnson said he believes construction of the planned new bridge at Cape Girardeau will significantly help improve navigation and safety.

"I think once the bridge is put in, it would be no problem to have a boat at the (Boyd site) or the lower sites," he said.

A small, restaurant boat was moored at the foot of Broadway for years.

But Busch said that boat was much smaller than the riverboat casinos proposed by the two gaming companies. He said any development along the Missouri bank of the river at Cape Girardeau can be a hazard.

"The pilot can lose a boat, or if a tow breaks upstream, the barges will be going through there," Busch said.

Rushing recalled the time he was sent to help lasso 22 barges floating down the river after a 25-barge tow hit the shore at Cape Rock.

"By the time we had them all corralled, we were about 11 miles down river," he said.

Rushing said the Corps will "try to be sensible" to work with riverboat gambling companies and the river development they'll usher into the city.

"But it's a bad spot where they're talking about," he said. "In my opinion, there's no way, either way, these boats are going to get in where they're making the public believe they will."