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Source: Duluth Seaway Port Authority

Higher Great Lakes water levels, continued strong coal shipments and a windfall of wind turbine traffic all contributed to strong tonnage totals through July, yet Duluth-Superior’s maritime commerce is lagging slightly behind last year’s record-setting pace, the Duluth Seaway Port Authority reported today.

All cargo through July totaled 21 million short tons, 6.5 percent behind 2007, which is remarkable considering grain shipments were down 62 percent compared to this timeframe last year.

Lake Levels Up.

Above average spring rainfall in all of the Great Lakes basins raised lake levels well above their levels of a year ago. Lake Superior is 16 inches above last year’s level, and forecasted to rise an additional inch over the next 30 days, enough to allow vessels to depart Duluth-Superior with as much as 14 additional inches of draft compared to the end of last year’s shipping season.

Each inch of draft means about 270 tons of cargo for the largest domestic lakers and about 100 tons for typical Seaway vessels. The remaining Great Lakes range from 6 to 13 inches above their levels of a year ago, and despite some seasonal declines forecasted for Lakes Erie, Michigan-Huron and Ontario, all (with the exception of Erie) are expected to remain above 2007 water levels over the next few months.

Coal Leads Commerce.

Historically the Port’s No. 2 cargo, coal shipments eclipsed iron ore during the early months of the 2008 shipping season and continue as the Port’s maritime commerce leader to date. The clean-burning, low-sulfur coal shipped via the port’s Midwest Energy Resources Company terminal reached 9.9 million tons through July (three percent above last year’s level). Total iron ore shipments through July of 8.9 million tons were running 12.4 percent behind 2007 tonnage totals to date. Iron ore shipments are expected to increase in the second half of the shipping season.

Project Cargo on Track.

Project cargo shipments at the Clure Public Marine Terminal continue to be strong. Wind turbine component cargo handled by Lake Superior Warehousing Co. is Read the rest of this entry »

ALAN INGRAM | Source: Morning Journal

A plan is brewing that would turn Lorain into a port that could ship and receive goods to and from international destinations.

The project calls for a permanent shipping facility to be built on land just west of the Lofton Henderson Bridge on the Black River, Fallis explained. It would have enough docking space for two 750-foot ocean-going ships to tie up.

Before the permanent facility would be built, however, a temporary one would be set up on the finger piers at the mouth of the Black River. That facility would be used for five years, as officials worked to build up the market, and design and engineer the permanent site, Councilman Mitchell Fallis said.

…Fallis said there wouldn’t be much cost upfront for the temporary location — other than leveling off the land and putting up fencing to protect the products.

The permanent location near the Henderson bridge is ideal for a few reasons, Fallis said. There is not enough room for the ocean-going ships to go under the Henderson Bridge, and that site also has close access to rail and two state routes — SR 57 and SR 611.

Neither the city nor the Port Authority owns the land that’s being proposed for the permanent facility, Fallis said. Some would have to be purchased, while some could be leased from CSX railroad.

Many more details and quotes at the Morning Journal >>

Sonja Puzic | Source: Windsor Star

Black box data recorders in ocean-going ships could be used to monitor saltwater concentration in the vessels’ ballast tanks and prevent the transport of aquatic invasive species into the Great Lakes, according to a report released this week.

If such technology was widely used in the shipping industry, the ballast tanks’ salinity levels would be transmitted electronically to port authorities before the ship even enters North American waters, eliminating the need for inspectors to physically examine the tanks.

The use of black boxes to help prevent more critters from entering the Great Lakes is one of a number of recommendations made in the report titled Great Lakes Shipping, Trade and Aquatic Invasive Species, prepared by a National Research Council of the U.S. National Academies committee.

Benefits, details, interviews at the Windsor Star >>

Source: Crain’s Chicago Business

The Illinois International Port District should be disbanded since it has done little to develop maritime business at the Port of Chicago in the past 25 years, according to a new report from the Civic Federation of Chicago.

The taxpayer advocacy group, which released a highly critical report Monday on the Port District’s operations and accountability as a public agency, recommends that responsibility for the Port of Chicago on the Far South Side be turned over to the City of Chicago.

…the district lacks a long-range strategic plan to increase maritime traffic or industrial development.

The Civic Federation says the district’s last significant port improvement was in 1981 when it opened Iroquois Landing, a 100-acre freight terminal at the mouth of the Calumet River.

Read the full story, download the PDF report at Crain’s Chicago Business >>

ALAN INGRAM | Source: Morning Journal

The president and owner of St. George’s Renewable Energies LLC has a vision to not only put wind turbines throughout the region and in Lake Erie, but also to create 12,000 to 13,000 new first-tier jobs by drawing one of the top three wind turbine manufacturers to Lorain County and specifically Lorain.

Sekulic has asked Lorain Councilman Dennis Flores, D-2, to sponsor legislation that would give his company the ability to put 13 wind turbines off the Lorain shoreline when the time comes. The turbines would all be more than 1,000 yards off shore and would start at the western end of the city and move east, Sekulic said.

“That’s an excellent location,” he said, adding that area along the lake is mostly commercial.

Besides the potential need for many wind turbines, the area can also offer the manufacturers a supplier base, fresh water, shipping ability and a skilled workforce.

Read the rest of the proposed plans, project at the Morning Journal >>

by Dan Egan | Source: Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

The scope of the ecological damage of the biological pollution linked to overseas shipping is matched by its staggering economic toll.

• The cost comes in lost tourism on beaches unsuitable for swimming and in the empty recreational fishing boats that are the backbone of a Great Lakes fishery valued at over $7 billion a year. Recreational fishing from Michigan’s 10 busiest fishing ports on Lake Huron, for example, has plummeted from around 1.2 million hours in 2003 to about 300,000 last year - because of a crash in salmon. And there are early but ominous signs Lake Michigan’s sport fishery could be headed in the same direction.
• The cost comes in power and water bills as part of never-ending programs to keep water intake pipes free of mussel and algae buildup. We Energies alone spent well over $3 million on structures to keep cladophora out of intake pipes at just two power plants, in Port Washington and Oak Creek. It is spending an additional $2.6 million on special mussel-proof screens as part of its expansion at Oak Creek, and its overall operating costs for controlling mussels - which cluster and clog industrial intake pipes like plaque in a carotid artery - is estimated at $500,000 a year. That’s just one company. The most comprehensive survey to date indicates the pipe-clogging costs to industry and government since 1988 approach $1.5 billion.
• The cost comes in tax bills - $358 million has been spent by the U.S. and Canadian government since 1958 killing just sea lampreys, an almost-forgotten bloodsucking parasite that swam into the lakes through the shipping canals and still must be controlled with annual doses of poison or it will devastate what’s left of the lakes’ prized predator fish.
• The cost comes in shrinking property values and our ability to enjoy the lakes. Just one county in Wisconsin gives a glimpse of the fortune at stake. Property records show shoreline properties in Door County, where Nell lives, have an assessed value of $2.6 billion.

Scientists say the only way to stanch the shipborne onslaught is to somehow sterilize the freighter-steadying ballast water sloshing in the bellies of the 700-foot-long behemoths that lumber up the Seaway.

But there is another simple, radical and potentially cheap way to address this problem - shut oceangoing ships out of the lakes until they can prove they won’t pollute them.

The shipping industry claims a ban could deal a brutal economic blow to the Midwest. But the relatively tiny amount of overseas cargo that flows on the Seaway likely could be absorbed at a relatively small cost by a handful of daily trains, or transferred before the ships reach the Seaway door to a Great Lakes-based freighter fleet.

The shipping industry bristles at the notion. But the industry also balked at the mandate for double-hulled oil tankers; now it boasts about its safety record.

Preliminary results from a federally funded study under way at the University of Notre Dame estimate that the economic loss tied directly to 57 exotic species scientists believe were delivered to the lakes by overseas vessels is costing us about $300 million a year - more than a million dollars a day for every day the Seaway is open (it closes each winter because of ice). That number does not include any losses in property values.

And the economic benefit of allowing the polluting ocean ships into the Great Lakes?

Only about $55 million a year, in terms of transportation savings over truck, rail and barge alternatives, according to a 2005 Joyce Foundation-funded analysis of cargo flows on the Great Lakes. The study has been ferociously criticized by shipping interests as an overly simplistic look at a complex transportation system, but it was successfully defended before an independent panel of transportation experts.

The promise of the Seaway, when it opened in 1959, was that it would turn Midwest cities such as Milwaukee into world-class ports. But it was built too small to accommodate many of the world’s freighters. Today ocean vessel traffic on the Great Lakes is a boutique business, done by an antique-sized fleet that accounts for less than 7% of the cargo moved along the Seaway and among the five big lakes, according to the Army Corps of Engineers. The ships primarily haul foreign steel into the region and depart with grain.

The vast majority of Great Lakes shipping is done by the freshwater “laker” fleet that hauls bulk commodities such as iron ore, salt and cement from one Great Lakes port to another.

Much, much more analysis, coverage; photos, video and diagrams at the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel >>

Brian Mulherin | Source: Ludington Daily News

Lake Michigan, which normally comes up 2 inches in June, is up 5 inches through 22 days.

Lake Michigan is by no means at or even near its long-term average, but it’s getting closer every month. Right now, the lake is about 14 inches below the average June level from 1918-2007. The lake’s current elevation, 578.1 feet above sea level, is 4 inches above last year’s water height.

Higher lake levels mean Great Lakes shippers can carry more freight and might mean easier recreational boating for many.

More details, quotes from USACE at the Ludington Daily News >>

John Myers | Source: Duluth News Tribune

The group will explain its mission, offer the latest water-level information and take public questions and input Monday night at the Depot in Duluth, one of several public sessions this month across the Great Lakes region.

John Nevin, policy adviser with the International Joint Commission, said the commission wants to know whether changing the rules on how dams and gates are operated might help buffer against broad water-level changes over the long haul.

That might help waterfront landowners on Georgian Bay who have been left far from the water’s edge, or Great Lakes freighters that have been forced to reduce loads to account for shallower harbors and slips.

Read the full story at the Duluth News Tribune >>

Source: Farm and Dairy

PUT-IN-BAY, Ohio — The Stone Laboratory will host guest lectures through the summer at Gibraltar Island.

All lectures begin at 7:45 p.m. and conclude at 9 p.m.

Each lecture is preceded by a short lecture on current research at 7 p.m.

Members of the public are welcome and can take the Put-in-Bay Water Taxi from the Boardwalk Restaurant Dock at 7:15 p.m. before each lecture.

A short tour of Gibraltar Island will be provided before the lectures.

Lecture dates:

• June 12: Global warming: science or religion, Chris Korleski, Ohio Environmental Protection Agency
• June 19: A brief history of Stone Laboratory and update on the current status of Lake Erie, Jeff Reutter, Ohio State University
• June 26: Geology of the Great Lakes: three billion years of spectacular scenery in the making, Charles E. Herdendorf, OSU
• July 3: Hypoxia alters species distributions and interactions: implications for food webs and fisheries, Stu Ludsin, OSU
• July 10: Fisheries Management and Research in Ohio, Ray Petering, Ohio Division of Wildlife
• July 24: Threats, impacts, adaptation, and opportunities for the Great Lakes related to climate change, Brent Sohngen, OSU
• July 31: The university system of Ohio, Eric Fingerhut, Ohio Board of Regents
• Aug. 7: Ships are cool!, James H. I. Weakley, Lake Carriers’ Association
• Sept. 6: Stone Laboratory open house, 11 a.m.-4 p.m.

Contact the Stone Laboratory office for information at 614-285-1800.

By TOM PETERS | Source: The Chronicle Herald

The Port of Halifax, as a centre for short sea shipping, may play a future role in the development of Cleveland, Ohio, as a cargo gateway to the U.S. Midwest.

Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson recently signed an agreement with the Costa Rica government to be a distribution centre for a variety of Costa Rican products and Halifax could eventually be part of the supply chain.

The agreement will see products, mainly agricultural goods, heading toward Cleveland later this year. The cargo will come into the U.S. via a southern port, most likely Miami, and then be either railed or trucked to Ohio.

But as cargo volumes grow, that could all very well change, says Adam Wasserman, president and CEO of the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority.

“In the future we would hope volumes would build and the opportunity would be there to take most of the product via water all the way in (to Cleveland), and ports like Halifax, we hope, would play a significant role,” he said in a telephone interview Tuesday.

… Another piece of the logistics chain is a short sea service, which might happen within the next few months. Great Lakes Feeder Lines of Burlington, Ont., has taken ownership of a small container vessel it plans to use to start a short sea service.

Read the full story at The Chronicle Herald >>

by Jim Provance | Source: Toledo Blade

“Why not bring and develop an industry cluster based on companies that deal with safe, clean water?” he asked. “It seems to me that we need to bring not only more companies that take advantage of the shipping routes, but also companies that deal with water in general.”

The compact, already approved by four of eight Great Lakes states, is stuck in the Ohio General Assembly. The version ratified in other states matches what was twice overwhelmingly passed in the House, but it is competing with a less restrictive version in the Senate.

Read the full story at the Toledo Blade >>

Source: WXXI

ROCHESTER, NY (2008-04-29) The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will begin dredging the Port of Rochester next month — so big ships can get into the Charlotte Harbor once again.

Dredging out the channel as far as the ESSROC cement company dock will re-open the Genesee River to the last commercial lake freighter that comes into Rochester. The “Steven B. Roman” ran aground a year ago because of silt in the channel.

It will also open the Port of Rochester to bigger Great Lakes cruise ships. Congresswoman Slaughter says that will let the terminal building in the harbor be used for passengers again.

And Slaughter says she’s talked with Canadian members of Parliament about possibilities for commercial ferry service once again between Rochester and Toronto. A company is trying to build interest in using a hovercraft to cross the lake.

Read the full story at WXXI >>

Posted By JOHN MINNIS | Source: The Sarnia Observer

[T]he Great Lakes [were] addressed by experts at the fourth Binational Lake St. Clair Conference held recently in Harrison Township, Michigan.

According to records kept by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the elevation difference between lakes Huron and Erie was nine feet in 1918, the earliest year for which comparable data are available. Today, the difference is five feet.

Rob Nairn, a principal with W.F. Baird and Associates of Oakville, Ontario, who authored a 2005 study on the elevation difference between lakes Michigan-Huron and St. Clair-Erie, told conference attendees the decline was due to sand mining, shipping canal dredging before 1960 and, more recently, erosion in the St. Clair River.

…Lower lake levels reduce the amount of cargo that ships can transport through the lakes.

Much more to this story at The Sarnia Observer >>

Source: Dredging News Online

Governor Jim Doyle has announced US$4 million in Harbour Assistance Grants for the Port of Superior.

Speaking at a breakfast attended by municipal, business, tourism, and labour representatives from Superior and northern Wisconsin, Doyle said: “The Port of Superior is a critical part of Wisconsin’s economy. It is the Great Lakes’ largest harbour, handling a variety of agricultural products and other bulk materials, supporting job growth in Wisconsin and throughout the Midwest.”

The two grants, which total US$3,938,160, require a 20 per cent match from the city of Superior, and will be used to make needed repairs to docks.

One of the grants, for US$2,578,160, will be used for improvements to the Cutler-Magner dock wall. Increased production at the facility requires the storage area to be enlarged, stabilized and secured. The company has already invested approximately Us$36 million in facility upgrades on its own.

The second grant, totaling US$1,360,000, will be used by Cenex/Harvest States to install 520 feet of coated steel dock wall and Read the rest of this entry »

Mike Simpson | Source: FM 91.3 KUWS

“…at this point it looks like we’re going to have a very good season—at least as good as last year and possibly as much as two million more tons being handled in the Duluth Superior harbor.”

[Duluth Seaway Port Authority Facilities Manager Jim] Sharrow says they expect coal will be the largest commodity to be handled in the harbor followed closely by iron ore.

“We’ve been told by Midwest Energy that they very likely could ship one million tons additional of coal this year over 2007, and we believe the iron ore could go up by a similar amount. The fact that Keytac, which was out of production for a good part of the winter in 2007 due to a freeze up in the mine, that reduced their tonnage last year.”

Sharrow says wind cargo imports and exports should be steady.

The Great Lakes were down 5.1% in U.S. trade last year due to low water levels. Sharrow says people may see ships carrying less cargo again this year.

Read the full story at FM 91.3 KUWS >>

See Also: New fleet, boat safety on Coast Guard chief’s list - Detroit Free Press

Source: TradingMarkets.com

Angular chunks of ice leap from the water like live beasts suddenly wakened from sleep, groaning and bouncing in dark water.

Cracks ripple across untouched ice. The buoy deck — near ice level — shudders underfoot.

For hours every day in the final weeks of winter, the Coast Guard cutter Mackinaw, the behemoth of the Great Lakes icebreaking fleet, grinds through plates of ice 2 feet thick, methodically cutting a path for the return of big ships to the Sault Ste. Marie locks, which open Tuesday.

About 60,000 jobs in the United States and Canada depend directly on the movement of cargo — iron ore, salt, coal and limestone — on the Great Lakes. The shipping season is 42 weeks, 12 of which require icebreaking. It’s crucial that the shipping industry restart traffic on time after a 2-month winter shutdown.

Some 800 oceangoing vessels move cargo through the St. Lawrence Seaway and Great Lakes each year; another 62 freighters ply Great Lakes ports exclusively. Together, they carry billions of dollars worth of raw material and steel more cheaply than can be transported by rail or truck.

Full story at TradingMarkets.com >>

by Dan Bellerose | Source: The Sault Star

“[Ship t]raffic is moving but it’s moving slowly. . . . We have more ice than resources to deal with it at present and it has slowed movement to a crawl.”

…The ice itself isn’t abnormally thick, but it’s the second-largest ice-cover accumulation in the last dozen years, according to the U.S. National Weather Service, and the difficulty is getting the broken ice to flow downstream rather than congest, Gill said.

Icebreakers are encountering 46 to 76 centimeters (18 to 30 inches) of plate ice throughout the length of the St. Mary’s and up to 96 cm of brash ice.

… Usually, three 660-ton Bay-class icebreaking tugs patrol the lower St. Mary’s during breakout. But only two are available this spring and one of them, the Biscayne Bay, out of St. Ignace, has seen limited duty this week due to propulsion problems.

The Mackinaw was relocating from Whitefish Bay and the upper St. Mary’s to the lower St. Mary’s on Wednesday afternoon to assist the Katmai Bay, out of the Michigan Sault. Its hoped the Canadian Coast Guard light icebreaker Samuel Risley will be downbound from Thunder Bay in the coming days.

Ice congestion in the lower river system has upbound traffic moving in two- to five-vessel convoys, with an icebreaker escort, and three such convoys had moved since Tuesday. But there has been no downbound traffic and five vessels were waiting to move out early Wednesday afternoon.

More to this excellent story at the Sault Star, click to read >>

By Joe Knaapen  | Source: Oshkosh Northwestern

STURGEON BAY — The winter fleet at Bay Shipbuilding Co. has begun the annual spring migration to the Soo Locks.

Four freighters — the 1,000-footers Paul R. Tregurtha and Edgar B. Speer, and the 767-foot Arthur M. Anderson and the 806-foot Charles M. Beeghly — left Sturgeon Bay Sunday in the race to be first through the locks at Sault Ste. Marie.

The freighters ran into heavy ice on Green Bay, and were delayed despite tracks cut by the Coast Guard cutter Mackinaw and maintained by the cutter Mobile Bay and commercial tugs.

The freighters coming out of Bay Ship lost the race to the Cason J. Calloway [sic], which sailed out of Erie, Pa., and was first through the Soo.

“There’s plate ice out there a couple of feet thick,” said Lt. Cdr. Matt Smith, commander of the Mobile Bay, which makes its home port in Sturgeon Bay.

After the Mackinaw cut a track south to Sturgeon Bay and returned back north to the Soo, Smith said the Mobile Bay was assigned to keep the path open for commercial traffic. Temperatures turned cold over the weekend, however, bringing ice back into the cut.

While the commercial tug Erica Kobasic out of Escanaba handled close escort work, the Mobile Bay widened the track north from the Sherwood Point light at the mouth of Sturgeon Bay to the Rock Island Passage, which connects Green Bay to Lake Michigan between Rock Island and Michigan’s Garden Peninsula.

Starting Tuesday, the Mobile Bay began cutting a track from Sherwood Point south to Green Bay, opening its port to ship traffic, Smith said.

…. At Bay Ship, the ship movement means the crew of about 700 workers are under pressure to put the finishing touches on myriad details needed to put the winter fleet — 18 ships this season — back to work.

Nine freighters remain in port and most are expected to be gone by the end of March.

The phrase “winter fleet” applies to all the ships — from ferry boats to superfreighters — that make Bay Ship their home for the winter for repairs, inspections, surveys or offseason docking.

“We had a lot of late arrivals, boats coming in in mid-March,” said Todd Thayse, who manages repair services at Bay Ship.

By the end of the week, he added, all but three ships will have cleared the yard in Sturgeon Bay.

“There was heavy cargo demand, so they stayed out for an additional trip,” Thayse said of the ore carriers. “The steel industry is strong, so the demand is there for them to get back out there.”

Since mid-January, Bay Ship has worked three shift, seven days a week to get the repairs completed on time for captains and owners who are anxious to resume moving cargo, Thayse said.

“Everybody is trying to get out,” Thayse said. “They have to be careful because there’s heavy plate ice out there. The winds can move the plates, and take the ships right along with it.”

Demand was so heavy, Thayse said, that three freighters — the 1,000-footers Burns Harbor and Stewart J. Cort and 728-foot Jo[seph L.] Block — wintering in Milwaukee under the Bay Ship umbrella left earlier this month to haul taconite out of Escanaba.

Heavy ice conditions on Green Bay are helping convince some captains to use the ship canal and go east out of Bay Ship through Sturgeon Bay to Lake Michigan, Thayse said.

The captains are weighing the time savings and risks of traveling on low water through two downtown bridges and the Bayview Bridge over State 42-57 compared with potential delays in heavy ice by going west to Green Bay and north to Rock Island.

Read the full story, photos at the Oshkosh Northwestern >>

by Bob Brenzing | Source: WZZM

… Approximately 12 Great Lakes freighters are already on their way according to Steven Rose, Chief of the Soo’s Operation Branch.

What the Locks are all about, neat photo at WZZM >>

by Jeff Alexander | Source: Muskegon Chronicle

Banning ocean freighters from the Great Lakes and requiring those ships to transfer cargo in Montreal would create more than a thousand new jobs for domestic shipping employees, truckers and rail employees, according to a new study.

The study could fuel the debate about whether the time has come to ban transcontinental ships from the St. Lawrence Seaway.

Critics have suggested closing the Seaway until shipping companies can prove ocean freighters are not importing more harmful foreign species into the lakes. The new study suggests there might be an economic incentive to keeping ocean ships out.

“We knew there were a fairly small number of jobs directly related to ocean shipping in the Great Lakes. We were surprised how few jobs there were, given the comments of the St. Lawrence Seaway administration,” said John C. Taylor, a Grand Valley State University economics professor who co-authored the study with transportation consultant James L. Roach.

The study did not advocate banning ocean ships from the Great Lakes. It analyzed whether such a move made economic sense.

Despite the myriad of problems invasive species imported by ocean freighters have caused in the lakes, the notion of barring them from the Seaway is “absurd,” said Terry Johnson, Jr., administrator of the St. Lawrence Seaway Development Corp.

“The premise is that we would somehow abrogate a 100-year-old treaty with one of our largest trading partners and neighbor to the North, and that’s just not going to happen,” Johnson said. “This (study) is a paper exercise.”

Jennifer Nalbone, campaign director for Great Lakes United, said U.S. and Canadian officials who operate the Seaway should give the Taylor-Roach study an objective review.

“These experts are putting forth potential solutions for the trans-shipment of goods (from ocean freighters onto trucks and trains) and we would like to see the shipping industry respond with research instead of rhetoric,” Nalbone said.

Steve Fisher, executive director of the American Great Lakes Ports Association, said the notion of closing the Seaway to ocean ships is a “false idea.”

“No one except these two professors are even talking about it,” Fisher said.

Several environmental groups and a handful of lawmakers in the region have suggested closing the Seaway until ocean ships can prove their ballast water tanks are not carrying more foreign species into the lakes.

Much more to the study and controversy at the Muskegon Chronicle >>