The full ACOE study referenced below can be found at:
http://www.glsls-study.com/
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Original Story URL:
http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=691994
Seaway strives to stay afloat
Aging shipping route needs billions in repairs, study says
By DAN EGAN
degan@journalsentinel.com
Posted: Nov. 30, 2007
The St. Lawrence Seaway has been open for almost a half century, and it is going to take a boatload of cash to keep the Great Lakes' aged navigational link to the world open for another 50 years.
A study released this week by the U.S. and Canadian governments says the Seaway needs about $2.45 billion in repairs and maintenance over the next four decades. The jointly owned system of locks and channels creates a 2,400-mile-long shipping route between Duluth and the Atlantic Ocean.
Conservation groups are suspicious. They believe the Army Corps of Engineers has been too fixed on managing the Great Lakes as a nautical highway instead of a one-in-the-world natural resource that holds about 20% of the Earth's fresh surface water. The big lakes are ailing, and the oceangoing ships traveling up and down the Seaway have something to do with it.
The original Seaway, not including the Soo Locks on Lake Superior and the Niagara Falls-bypassing Welland Canal, cost about $3 billion in today's dollars when it opened in 1959. It never lived up to expectations in terms of overseas cargo, and it has been blamed for exposing the Great Lakes to untold damage in the form of such invasive species as the zebra mussel.
But the locks and channels have also proved valuable as a link between ports within the Great Lakes region, and federal transportation officials appear ready to spend what it will take to keep open a system that today operates at about 50% capacity.
"We are committed to ensuring that this vital trade corridor remains a safe, reliable and efficient component of our continent's transportation system," U.S. Secretary of Transportation Mary E. Peters said after Monday's release of the approximately $20 million study, the cost of which was split by the U.S. and Canada.
Others are dubious that $20 million worth of new information is contained in a document that took nearly four years to complete.
"I wouldn't say it's completely useless, but it's pretty darn close," said Rick Spencer of the National Wildlife Federation.
The future of the Seaway has indeed become a touchy subject for many members of the Great Lakes conservation community. They point to oceangoing boats' history of discharging noxious cargoes in the form of invasive species at Great Lakes ports. This "biological pollution" has been blamed for squeezing out native fish populations, fouling prime beaches with blankets of rotting algae and even spawning botulism outbreaks that have killed thousand of birds.
The shipping industry acknowledges the invasive species problem and is working on ballast water treatment systems that kill unwanted organisms before they get a chance to jump ship. Legislation requiring such systems is pending in Congress, but it has been that way for several years.
Meanwhile, a new invasive species is discovered in the Great Lakes, on average, about every six months, and science shows that in recent decades the overwhelming majority of those invaders have arrived aboard foreign vessels.
Little boats vs. big boats
Conservationists skeptical about the value of overseas traffic in the Great Lakes point to a 2005 study funded by Chicago's Joyce Foundation that pegged the transportation savings tied to oceangoing traffic in the Great Lakes at about $55 million a year. At the same time, the dollar costs of just the pipe-clogging zebra mussel since the Caspian Sea native was first discovered in the Great Lakes two decades ago has been estimated at about $2 billion.
A separate study released by the Army Corps this summer, meanwhile, revealed that recreational boating on the Great Lakes drives almost $16 billion in yearly spending on boats and related activities. The U.S. Seaway operators commissioned their own study several years ago that shows commercial navigation on the Great Lakes and Seaway generates $3.4 billion in revenue a year. But an overwhelming majority of that business is strictly regional; only about 7% of Great Lakes shipping involves foreign vessels, according to another Army Corps study completed in 2003.
The new study released this week looks at how to enhance that business by better managing the Seaway to meet future transportation needs.
"We're trying to understand in the next 50 years who will use this system, what kind of ships will transit the system and what will be the pressures on the system," said Marc Fortin of Transportation Canada.
The Army Corps' David Wright said traffic projections for the next half century call for "slow but steady increases" in cargo flows. He said one key to the Seaway's future is to use it to alleviate pressure on highways and railways.
"The study shows there are some potential niche markets that are starting to evolve," Wright said.
One area the study looks at is the concept called shortsea shipping, which involves transferring shipping containers from bigger vessels at Eastern ports and hauling them into the region on smaller Seaway vessels.
"That is where our future is," said Dean Haen, president of the Wisconsin Commercial Ports Association. "We're going to need to be a viable mode of transportation to reduce congestion on roads and rails."
Build a bigger Seaway?
The 2003 Army Corps study looked at the prospects of expanding the Seaway locks so they can handle today's super-sized freighters.
The problem, according to the Army Corps at the time, is the existing Seaway locks are too small to handle most of the world's modern shipping fleet. Build bigger locks, the Army Corps reasoned, and bigger ships would start showing up. Estimated cost: roughly $10 billion.
Conservationists howled at the idea of a project they said would open the lakes to more unwanted invaders on a gamble they think likely would not pay off. Even if lock size were not an issue, they argued, the Seaway has always been hampered by the fact that it closes each winter due to ice. That is a significant obstacle to shippers who need year-round service.
The Corps backed away from its expansion plan and headed off on this new study with Canada to evaluate what it will take to keep the Seaway operating until 2050 in its existing configuration.
"If the locks are falling apart, which they are, and they want to keep the Seaway open, rebuild it in its existing size," said Spencer of the National Wildlife Federation. "But don't just keep doing these studies over and over again."
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