Dredging pushed at Great Lakes hearings held at UW-Green Bay
April 22, 08 by TheFleetIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
By Tony Walter | Source: Green Bay Press Gazette
James Weakley, president of the Cleveland-based Lake Carriers Association, said Friday that help for a shipping industry that is suffering because of low water levels on the Great Lakes is not only possible but simple.
“The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers estimates removing the backlog (of channel dredging) will cost more than $230 million,” Weakley said Friday at the Congressional Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment hearing at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. “That’s less than it costs to reconfigure a single intersection south of Chicago.”
Weakley was one of several to testify on the problems of lake levels and invasive species that continue to plague the Great Lakes. The Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund has a surplus of $4.1 billion, and the $230 million needed to restore the lakes’ navigational channels is just 6 percent of that, he said.
Dean Haen, Green Bay port director, said the harbor has been 12 to 24 inches below normal for the past several years, limiting shipping and creating higher costs for consumers. Shipping was a $76 million industry in Green Bay in 2007 and provided 600 jobs, he said.
But Haen said every inch lost in water level results in lost business for the harbor.
Read the full story, more testimony at the Green Bay Press Gazette >>
