Ottawa Citizen/Editorial:
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/Technology/Between+land/1467866/story.html
Between land and sea
The Ottawa Citizen
April 6, 2009
Even though the St. Lawrence Seaway is only about an hour's drive south of here, Ottawans don't spend a lot of time considering it.
Perhaps this is because the city is government-centric and non-industrial, while the Seaway represents the heaviest of industry. Whatever the reason, the great blue stream into the centre of the continent does not make a big blip on the Ottawa radar screen. It should.
The Seaway, now turning 50 years old, began as a government initiative. The giant shipping lane was supposed to be a highway that would turn Toronto, Cleveland, Detroit and Chicago into great inland ports, spurring industrial development on the North American continent.
But times change. The economy of 1959 was not the economy of 1985. The expansion of the Interstate highway system in the United States, plus the Autoroutes of Quebec, the 400 series of freeways in Ontario and the Trans-Canada Highway made trucking supreme. Transports could carry shipping containers at high speed across the continent in a world of cheap gas and disregard of the environment.
So rather than turning inland cities into great ports, Seaway shipping tended to carry bulk products such as wheat, coal and iron ore rather than the accoutrements of urban retail society. The route was useful, but not as successful as was first hoped. Toronto became a place where roads converged rather than shipping lanes.
Some other unwanted travellers appeared in the Seaway. The zebra mussel hitched a ride in the ballast of ocean-going boats. These destructive mollusks have interfered with the food chain in the river and the Great Lakes. They also foul the bottom of boats and municipal water intakes.
So too the lamprey eel, a parasitic beast that latches onto the side of fish, slowly killing them. This was not in the plans of the Seaway, just as the growth of trucking was not either.
Other challenges face the Seaway. Only 10 per cent of ocean-going ship vessels can ply the waterway; the rest don't fit through the locks. Also, the shipping channels in the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence aren't as deep as the ocean, further limiting the vessels which can take advantage of this inland highway. With global warming, the lakes are expected to become even more shallow.
That's not the end of difficulties on the Seaway. Oil pollution has fouled the once-pristine river; entire communities had to be eliminated to accommodate raising water levels, which were needed to permit shipping and electrical generation; wetlands have been destroyed; and dredging has ruined river and lake bottoms.
Still, there have been benefits. Jobs were created to build the project and jobs remain fixing it. Renewable hydro power is generated on the river.
And there is a future for the Seaway. As oil becomes more expensive, modes of transportation such as shipping and rail, which carry large loads cheaply, will become more important. Furthermore, trains and ships give off much fewer greenhouse gases than trucks.
The Seaway could become important again in ways that its founders 50 years ago could not have imagined.
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