Seaway Exec refusing to look at saltie moratorium, despite ample alternative capacity to move cargo
July 01, 08 by TheFleetIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
by Dan Egan | Source: Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel
U.S. Seaway boss Collister Johnson Jr. says talk of blocking oceangoing traffic on the Great Lakes isn’t realistic because the U.S. jointly owns the Seaway with Canada, so the U.S. could not unilaterally close the door to oceangoing ships.
“It’s just not going to happen,” he says.
It isn’t just Americans who have floated the idea of locking out overseas vessels. In May last year a binational coalition of 90 environmental groups endorsed the idea of a shipping moratorium until those vessels can prove they will not further pollute the lakes.
But even if people contest the accuracy of his $55 million estimate, he says, the federal government’s own data reveals how relatively tiny the overseas shipping business is. Last year 459 oceangoing vessels sailed up the Seaway during its nine-month shipping season.
“People think it’s a lot bigger part of the transportation system than it is,” he says.
Rail executives say they have ample capacity to handle the roughly 9 million tons of cargo oceangoing ships moved through the Seaway last year.
Ship operators who sail only in the Great Lakes and Seaway also say they could muster the capacity to move that tonnage to and from the Eastern ports if rail couldn’t do the job.
“If there were more product there, our ships would take advantage of that,” says Don Morrison, president of the Canadian Shipowners Association. “We wouldn’t let anything sit on the dock.”
Full story, more quotes and details at the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel >>
