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Report supports ship ban
Posted 10 hours ago
By DAN McCAFFERY
The Observer
The day may come when local residents will no longer by able to watch ocean-going ships slip silently up and down the St. Clair River.
There’s been talk of banning such vessels from the Great Lakes for years, mainly because aquatic invaders like the European zebra mussel have often hitched rides on them.
But critics of the idea have argued such a move would cost jobs and increase truck traffic on North America’s highways. And those extra trucks, they say, would add to the region’s air pollution troubles.
Now, however, researchers from a Michigan university have produced a report that claims keeping overseas shipping out of the system would cause little harm to the economy or environment.
The study, put together by Grand Valley State University in Allendale, also concludes such a ban would create 1,300 domestic jobs in Canada and the U.S. Most of those workers would be employed on lake vessels, barges, trains and trucks. Some jobs would relocate to Canadian ports on the St. Lawrence River, while others would end up on the east coast or the Gulf of Mexico.
“While we are not suggesting ocean ships be stopped to create domestic jobs, assertions that an end to ocean shipping on the Great Lakes would cost jobs are just plain wrong,” said John Taylor, the report’s lead author.
The study says truck traffic would increase by less than one per cent, and would only approach that on Highway 401 west of Montreal, where there would be an additional 89 trucks per day. The number of additional trucks would be far less on other routes.
Shipping interests have long maintained the use of trucks and trains to move cargo currently carried on ocean-going vessels would have a significant impact on air quality.
But the study refutes that, saying rail transportation would grow by only 1.6 trains per day across the entire region. And rail congestion is not a problem on the routes in question.
“Because of the extremely low total tonnage of cargo moved on ocean-going vessels compared to the total volumes of goods moved every day on our region’s highways, railways and waterway, congestion and air quality changes won’t register,” Taylor said.
The report claims there is adequate capacity in the Great Lakes transportation system to carry cargo currently shipped by ocean-going vessels.
It also says the total volume of ocean vessel traffic is about the amount that would be carried by a medium density single-track rail line or a single daily tug/barge on the lower Mississippi River.
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