There’s been no shortage of snow and ice in the United States this year. Although the days are slowly becoming longer, reports call for more snow in the Northeast and another Polar Votex to dip down from Canada. (These cold spells used to be called Alberta Clippers.) While cities in the Northeast are generally ready for winter woes – stockpiling what they deem an ample amount of salt to treat bad roads and sidewalks, this year some communities have faced crisis levels. From as far south as New Orleans to far north to Portland, Maine there’s been a demand for salt that has been unprecedented. In New Jersey, record amounts of snowfall have left mayors scrambling for more salt, and in some cities in New York the situation has become “very critical.”  Making matters worse, stockpiles at one of the New Jersey’s largest salt depots at Port Newark has nearly run out. That depot is stocked by International Salt of Clarks Summit, PA.  Most of the road salt that is delivered to the New York/New Jersey region is mined in South America and comes up to the United States by break bulk ship. Making matters worse, while New Jersey faced critical shortages in mid February, International Salt faced a situation where it had 40,000 tons of salt in Maine that it could not get delivered to New Jersey. The vessel the company sent to retrieve the load was stuck in Rhode Island due to the severe weather.  State officials arranged for another vessel to pick up a salt shipment. But the ship, which was already in Maine, was not registered by the United States.  The Jones Act, formerly known as the Merchant Marine Act, is a US maritime law that dates back to the 1920s. It prohibits non-US flag ships to handle cargo traveling from one US port to another. The reason: the action is deemed to take work away from US-run shipping lines and could potentially be a threat to national security. For obvious reasons, Hawaii and Alaska feel the greatest economic impact from the Jones Act, as does the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. Entities there claim the Act results in higher shipping costs since it protects US steamship lines and results in fewer shipping lines competing in their trade lanes.  In fact, as if the recession has not been bad enough, businesses in Hawaii have difficulty surviving largely due to the high shipping costs. Case in point: The French Gourmet, a Hawaii company that specialized in artisan frozen pastry dough. The company was featured in the August 2010 issue of Hawaii Business as among the small, local companies flourishing on a global scale, but failed in 2012. State of Emergency There have been states of emergencies where exceptions have been made to the Jones Act. One was during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina; another after Hurricane Sandy. In both cases, foreign flag carriers were allowed to haul fuel to the hard hit areas.  But with New Jersey’s Governor Chris Christie recently declaring four states of emergencies for the Garden State due to snow and ice and lack of salt to help treat the roads, the Jones Act issue raises its ugly head again and has become dire.  US Senators Robert Menendez and Cory A. Booker of New Jersey have written to the US Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Transportation (DOT) requesting assistance to make an exception to the Jones Act. Given the notorious slow pace at which government works, however, the fear was that the waiver wouldn’t be granted in time to make a difference.   Meanwhile, DOT representatives located a smaller vessel that could make the calls between Maine and New Jersey to retrieve some of the salt, albeit in small quantities. That vessel arrived at the Port of Newark days later carrying 9,500 tons. Port officials say, however, that offloading that shipment will take several days.  Once offloaded, the barge will return to Maine for another 9,500 ton shipment – a round trip voyage that will take approximately 10 days.  Meanwhile, a vessel from Chile carrying rock salt also arrived at the Port of Newark, but must await Customs clearance procedures – an effort that takes several days. Akin to throwing salt into the wound, however, a foreign vessel was already in Maine that could have loaded salt and shipped it to New Jersey. Instead, because Homeland Security denied the waiver to the Jones Act, that vessel returned to the Port of Newark empty.