Muskegon Chronicle:
http://www.mlive.com/news/muskegon/index.ssf/2009/03/environmentalists_blast_seaway.html
Environmentalists call St. Lawrence Seaway an economic bust and environmental disaster for Great Lakes
Posted by Jeff Alexander | The Muskegon Chronicle March 31, 2009 07:12AM
WEST MICHIGAN -- The St. Lawrence Seaway, an engineering marvel that linked the Great Lakes to the global shipping trade 50 years ago, has been an economic bust and an environmental disaster for the region, environmentalists said Monday.
The Seaway is a series of seven locks and three dams in the St. Lawrence River, between Lake Ontario and Montreal. The $1 billion project, which gave ocean freighters access to the Great Lakes for the first time, was supposed to create an economic bonanza in scores of Great Lakes coastal communities, including Muskegon.
But the volume of international cargo transported on the Seaway never met initial economic projections. In recent years, ocean freighters have accounted for less than 10 percent of all cargo transported on the Great Lakes, according to government data.
A more dubious distinction for the Seaway has been its role as a purveyor of harmful environmental change. Ocean freighters have accidentally imported zebra mussels and 56 other invasive species to the lakes which, collectively, have caused billions of dollars in damage and triggered profound ecological changes, according to scientific studies.
Officials from three Great Lakes conservation groups -- Great Lakes United, Save the River and the National Wildlife Federation -- said Monday that the 50th anniversary of the Seaway is time for a reality check, not a celebration.
"The Seaway has chronically overpromised and underdelivered," said Jennifer Caddick, executive director of the New York-based Save The River. "Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River communities were promised an 'economic renaissance' but instead we were handed significant environmental problems."
Government and shipping industry officials have called the Seaway a "vital waterway." U.S. and Canadian officials who manage the Seaway have said on their Web site that waterborne shipping is "the most benign mode of transport for the Earth's ecosystem."
Ships are more fuel efficient than trucks or trains. But ocean freighters that accessed the Great Lakes via the Seaway have unleashed environmental havoc by importing foreign species, conservationists said.
The U.S. and Canadian agencies that manage the Seaway have adopted rules requiring ocean freighters to flush ballast water tanks with sea water before entering the St. Lawrence River. But studies have shown some species can still reach the Great Lakes.
The Seaway is a far cry from what promoters envisioned when it formally opened on June 26, 1959.
"The great physical barrier which has blocked full-scale economic use of the St. Lawrence waterway between the Great Lakes and the sea has been removed," The Muskegon Chronicle reported in a May 9, 1959, special edition. "Muskegon and the broad Midwest are now, for all practical purposes, sea-coastal areas."
Today, ocean freighters rarely visit Muskegon. Most ocean freighters that ply the Great Lakes import steel and export grain; the vast majority of freighters that visit Muskegon are domestic ships carrying coal, gravel or salt.
© 2009 Michigan Live. All Rights Reserved.
---
Distributed without profit to ESA Great Lakes District members who have expressed an interest in receiving aquatic invasive species information for research and educational purposes.
