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Sunday, April 17, 2011

Environment - "Flood closures have cost Horseshoe casino an estimated $14.7 million"

Grace Schneider of the Louisville Courier Journal has this long story this weekend. It begins:

As the Ohio River swelled out of its banks before midnight March 9, guests at the Horseshoe casino hotel were rustled out of bed and away from the gaming tables and asked to pack their bags and leave.

The next afternoon, gamblers, card dealers and other casino workers aboard the riverboat were evacuated, marking the fourth time the Harrison County casino has been forced to close because of high water.

Such emergency shutdowns, mandated by the casino's federal Corps of Engineers permit, have cost the casino an estimated $14.7 million in gaming revenue since January 2000.

As a result, the state of Indiana has lost an estimated $2.75 million in wagering tax revenues, and the Harrison County government has lost $950,000. About $550,000 also been lost in admission taxes, which would have been distributed between the state and county.

Each closure is a fresh reminder of the costly gamble that original developer Caesars World made in choosing the flood-prone site on Ind. 111 for the $400 million complex, over the warnings of environmentalists.

“It's the same old same old. We told you so,” said Don Mottley, a spokesman for Save Our Rivers, a group that opposed the location because of flood concerns and potential damage to a nearby mussel bed.

Despite the repeated flooding and lost revenue, neither the casino nor the Indiana Gaming Commission, which approved the development plan, have given any indication the riverboat should be moved.

More, from near the end of the lengthy story:
The casino’s previous flood closings include a 3½-day shutdown in March 2008 that cost an estimated $2.8 million; a 10-day shutdown in January 2005 that cost an estimated $6.4 million; and a 1½-day shutdown in February 2000 that former general manager Ed Garuto said at the time cost about $1 million.

Besides the flood closures, the boat was shut down in June 1999 and moved because the river was too low, raising fears it could get mired in the mud and accumulated silt in the docking bay. But after being moved downstream, the boat was rammed at its temporary site by a runaway barge. That entire 13-day episode cost roughly $7.2 million.

Tim Maloney, public policy analyst with the Hoosier Environmental Council, said that environmental groups who fought the casino development unsuccessfully in federal court feel somewhat vindicated by the casino’s battles with Mother Nature.

Maloney said environmentalists long protested Indiana's original law for casinos to cruise and dock on Lake Michigan and the Ohio River because of potential damage to wetlands, aquatic resources and buried artifacts.

But the proposal in Harrison County stood out because it was obviously a poor site and flooding was a very predictable downside, Malone said.

“It was one of the problems that we all collectively raised,” he said.

But Ed Feigenbaum, publisher of a newsletter that tracks Indiana's gambling industry, said every casino “is susceptible to the idiosyncrasies of its own location.” He noted that Lake Michigan's high waves and “lake-effect snow” forced two casinos there to close for more than a day this year.

And regulators knew 16 years ago when they were reviewing the first casino plan for Evansville that river traffic and river conditions would pose problems, he said.

“No site and no property is perfect,” Feigenbaum said.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on April 17, 2011 03:44 PM
Posted to Environment | Indiana Government