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I work with these crop duster guys for a living. I'll bet they had extra chemical, and rather than land with it and deal with the EPA regulations on getting rid of it, they just sprayed it in the river.

Probably been doing for decades, but nobody cared before.

What I'd like to know is, did the guy come directly at the tow boat and turn the spray only on them. Then proceded to the pleasure boat and spray only the boat? Or was he just spraying the whole river? Which would look more to me like he was just unloading chemical.

Keep in mind, its a very hard process to load the precise amount of chemical so that you run out right at the end of the field with nothing left to spray.

If he was unloading chemical, I'm quite sure its illegal. And he should be busted if only for that.

The reports on the scene said the pilot went right for both the barge and the pleasure boat. Not concerned about dumping in the river, betcha he gets a ripped a new one from EPA, FAA anyone who can get their hands on him.

news said it sprayed the tug, came around, and then sprayed the pleasure boat. My question is, how the hell, with all the crop duster hysteria going on, and the missing crop duster from Florida, etc., does the government not know who this was and what plane? You'd think they'd have every cropduster in this country under close scrutiny, and would be able to pinpoint who this idiot was with relative ease. Apparently not. Sounds to me like somebody dropped the ball bigtime, whether this turns out to be anything or not. Even if it wasn't terrorists, what if it had been? They caught somebody sleeping on the job.

I work with these crop duster guys for a living. I'll bet they had extra chemical, and rather than land with it and deal with the EPA regulations on getting rid of it, they just sprayed it in the river.

Probably been doing for decades, but nobody cared before.

I don't know where you find "these crop duster guys" you claim to work with but with the kind of behavior you suggest not one of them would have kept his "seat" for ten minutes with any agricultural aviation I have ever associated with, loaded for, flown with, been chief pilot for, managed and/or owned in the 52 years I have been around the industry!

They'd have been packed off to the airlines with all of the other erks who can't fly!

Keep in mind, its a very hard process to load the precise amount of chemical so that you run out right at the end of the field with nothing left to spray.

Rubbish. Even before modern equipment including precisely-accurate ground-loading and aircraft-mounted spray flow meters, precise GPS spray-run "marking" and Million-Dollar modern aircraft it was a piece of cake for a capable pilot to end the last run with an empty tank!

This'll turn out to have been an hysterical over-reaction to the whiff of a bit of drift -- probably only the smell -- defoliant stinks! -- from an ag pilot simply doing his job in a field as the boats went by.

More than one run "at them?" Of course. The airplane sprays a limited swathe and has to go up and down some fields a hundred times or more!

Just suppose that a crop duster plane is stolen from its owner by a terrorist. Knowing that the plane still contains crop dusting chemicals of some sort, he decides to "kill two birds with one stone". Ergo, he dumps the load on any vessel in the area, then goes to his base and reloads the plane with his own chemicals.

I don't believe this is what happened, but, what if? It is possible isn't it?

Didn't know until this post that the barges were transporting coal. I'm relieved that the loads weren't grain or seed.