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Members of Congress asked House leaders Tuesday to act on legislation to allow the boat to continue overnight cruises on American rivers.
Rep. Tim Walz, D-Minnesota, also joined in the call to keep the historic paddle boat operational, but Wisconsin Democrat Ron Kind now says he can’t support the measure.
Congress has not acted to renew the boat’s longstanding waiver of a law that prohibits wooden vessels from carrying more than 50 overnight passengers. The Delta Queen has a steel hull, but the structure is wood. The current exemption expires in November. A bipartisan bill to extend it for 10 years was introduced last year and has 27 co-sponsors, including Kind. That bill has not made it out of the House Committee for Transportation and Infrastructure.
But after hearing from the committee, Kind now says there are serious safety concerns with the Delta Queen and he would only support an exemption if it underwent “the necessary upgrade to make it safe for overnight trips.”
The bill’s author, Rep. Steve Chabot, R-Ohio, hopes to introduce the exemption as an amendment to a Coast Guard bill expected to come to the floor later this month. It will be up to the rules committee to decide whether that amendment is in order, said George Cecala, Chabot’s press secretary.
The Delta Queen, which accommodates 174 passengers and 80 crew members, stopped in La Crosse once last year. It not only brings passengers here to spend money, it also draws people from around the tri-state region to downtown, said Clarissa Bates of the La Crosse Area Convention and Visitors Bureau.
The steam-powered boat still will sail this year but not on the upper Mississippi River.
Without the exemption, it could not continue to operate profitably, according to its operators, Majestic America Line.
“It just will not make enough money with fewer than 50 passengers, unless you charge a ridiculous amount of money,” said Mary Sward Charlton, the boat’s onboard historian. “It just doesn’t make sense to run a boat like that.”
Prices this year run from about $1,500 to more than $6,000, depending on the room and the cruise.
Majestic America, a subsidiary of Ambassadors International Inc., contends the law is meant to apply to ocean-going vessels, and the Delta Queen is safe and never far from shore. The boat has fire sprinklers and other safety equipment, and one minor fire aboard in 2003 was quickly extinguished, according to the company.
Company president Joe Ueberroth blames the stalled legislation on Rep. Jim Oberstar, who chairs the House transportation committee. The Minnesota Democrat opposes the exemption because the boat is a fire hazard to passengers and crew, said Mary Kerr, press secretary for the committee.
The Delta Queen, which has been operating since 1926, is a designated National Historic Landmark. Since 1968, it has operated under a congressional exemption to the 1966 Safety at Sea Act.
“This is an important invention, and this is the last one of her kind in this country,” Charlton said. “We need to keep this boat alive.”
Chris Hubbuch can be reached at chris.hubbuch@lee.net or (608) 791-8217.
