Excerpt from Lower Mississippi Navigational Safety of Gambling Vessels: Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Navigation of the Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries, House of Representatives, One Hundred Third Congress, First Session Today, the Subcommittee is here to learn what steps are being taken to ensure that life and commerce on the river are as safe as possible. In addition, we want to know what contingency plans are being made to prevent and to respond to the worst case scenario. We look forward to hearing the views of our distinguished panel of witnesses today. I ask that each please summarize their testimony. We have broken it down into two panels, the government panel and the second panel. Before recognizing our witnesses, I would like to report to you that two of our fellow members from the Baton Rouge area may be dropping in. Cleo Fields has indicated that he may want to stop by today and I have offered him an Opportunity to visit and to ask questions. And Congressman Baker indicated that prior commit ments have kept him from being here, but indeed he might try to stop by. Let me put it as succinctly as I can, Admiral and Mr. Pickering. We are interested in making sure that when gamblers get on those boats that the only thing at risk is their shirts and their pocket books and they do not have to put their lives at risk getting on the river. I have read your testimony, Admiral Card and I know, Mr. Pickering, yours is going to be oral today. Your testimony is in some respects frightening when we learn from you today, as we will, that every seven days a foreign flag ship entering the river or leaving the river will loose its steering or its propulsion system. Every seven days at least one will happen. That is a gross degen eration of safety when in 1981 that happened once every 20 days. Obviously the river can be a disastrous place if we are not prepared to respond. And the reason we are holding the hearing in Baton Rouge instead of New Orleans is that we are well acquainted with the presence of the Coast Guard and its fleet in New Orleans. We are deeply concerned that there is no presence on the water here in Baton Rouge. One of the things I would hope you would com ment on sometime, either in your statement or in questions, is whether or not we are adequately prepared to respond when the worst thing happens. We need to consider these things before we have a bunch Of people in the water and we have to do something about saving their lives. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.