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Greenships was founded by Stas Margaronis, president of California-based Santa Maria Shipowning & Trading Inc. Stas has spent over a decade fighting to build new ships in the United States. He proposes ships powered by clean diesel fuel that will reduce long-haul trucking and cut truck carbon emissions. By law, ships operating between U.S. ports must be built in the United States, so the greenship effort will not only build greener ships, it will create new shipbuilding jobs, new mariner jobs and new cargo-handling jobs.
A.P. (Stas) Margaronis, publisher
rbtus.com and greenships.org
1998-Present President, Santa Maria Shipowning & Trading, a start-up
company developing new shipbuilding and vessel operations service for
the United States (see www.santamariashipping.com)
1997-1998 Mid-Atlantic Correspondent, Atlantic Journal of Transportation
1986-1997 Editor and Publisher, Samtrade, a newsletter covering US trade
and manufacturing
1984- 1985 China Rail Equipment Sales. Based in Hong Kong, Margaronis
represented US companies marketing rail equipment to China including
US Leasing.
Margaronis has also been a warehouse worker for the Thrifty Drug Company
in Los Angeles, a political campaign aide for San Francisco Mayor
George Moscone, a political newsletter writer covering San Francisco
politics for the San Francisco Study Center. Margaronis began working
as a merchant seaman on a Greek flag vessel at the age of 15 following
a summer internship at a shipyard in Sevilla, Spain at the age of 14.
Margaronis, a Kiwanis Club member, is a former member of the International
Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU). His articles on trade and manufacturing
have appeared in the Journal of Commerce, the Asian Wall Street Journal,
the Baltimore Sun, the Saint Louis Post-Dispatch and the San Francisco
Chronicle. He has authored a guide to US employee rights (1982), a guide
to US trade problems with Japan (1989) and won a Lucy Lang Fellowship
at the School for Industrial Relations at the University of California,
Los Angeles. Margaronis is a graduate of Rollins College, Winter Park,
Florida. Currently, Margaronis produces influenza-pandemic.org and influenza-apndemic.com
sites that disseminate news on worldwide influenza trends. Margaronis
lives in Santa Rosa, California.
Marine Highway Shipping
As president of Santa Maria Shipowning
& Trading, Stas Margaronis has sought to construct small container
ships for the US (Jones Act) trades since 1997. In April, 2010, Santa
Maria signed an access agreement to develop a state-of-the-art shipyard
with the Port of Humboldt Bay (Eureka, Ca). Santa Maria and the Port
will be seeking U.S. Department of Transportation (TIGER) funding to
build the new shipyard and two 385 twenty-foot unit container ships
powered by diesel-electric engines using ultra-low sulfur fuels, just
like new trucks. The proposed two ship service would serve San Francisco
Bay Area ports as well Humboldt Bay.
Margaronis has assembled a Dutch naval
architectural firm, a Dutch short sea terminal designer, a Danish project
manager and several US contractors to develop marine highway shipping
services for the United States. In 2002, with the support of the American
Maritime Officers (AMO) and the marine engine maker, Wartsila, Santa
Maria successfully partnered with the US Coast Guard to develop reduced
manning standards for new, automated ships operating in US waters.
Margaronis produces a website devoted to green marine highway shipping
(www.greenships.org) and has incorporated these ideas into a second
website REBUILD THE UNITED STATES (www.rbtus.com). Margaronis has worked with California
Governor Schwarzenegger’s Freight Movement Council to develop a short
sea shipping strategy for California. In February, 2007, Margaronis
testified before a US House of Representatives transportation committee
where he urged the creation of a national short sea shipbuilding initiative
to build a new fleet of new U.S. ships to reduce long-haul trucking
congestion, high fuel consumption and pollution.
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