Steering Away From Seaway Expansion

For decades, international shippers have wanted bigger locks and channels in the St. Lawrence Seaway. Earlier this month, the Seaway’s chief in Canada said expansion is off the table, at least for a generation. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s David Sommerstein
reports:

Transcript

For decades, international shippers have wanted bigger locks and channels in the St. Lawrence Seaway. Earlier this month, the Seaway’s chief in Canada said expansion is off the table, at least for a generation. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s David Sommerstein reports:


Only a third of the world’s shipping fleet can fit in the Seaway. Industry has long said digging deeper drafts would bring much needed commerce to Great Lakes ports.


But Dick Corfe told shippers at a conference in Toronto there’d be no changes for fifteen to twenty years. Corfe is CEO of the St. Lawrence Seaway Management Corporation, which runs Canada’s half of the waterway.


“We have to work with what we have. We have the physical constraints of the locks. The ships can’t be any bigger than the locks, and we have an obligation to try and maximize the use of the system around the current infrastructure.”


Corfe said the way to do that is to move goods between East Coast and Great Lakes ports by ship instead of truck or train.


Corfe’s remarks come after the Army Corps of Engineers backed off a study last year that recommended expansion. Environmentalists said dredging and blasting a bigger channel would devastate Great Lakes ecology.


For the GLRC, I’m David Sommerstein.

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