A report released last week by the Brookings Institution says our homeland security has too many gaps in it, including safeguarding America’s port cities. The report recommends more cargo inspectors be hired. But as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mike Simonson reports, that could cause trouble for ports:
Transcript
A report released last week by the Brookings Institution says our homeland security has too many gaps in it, including safeguarding America’s port cities. The report recommends more cargo inspectors be hired, but as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mike Simonson reports, that could cause trouble for ports:
The report warns that container cargo ships need to be monitored more closely, because it’s too easy to plant an explosive on one of those vessels, so more inspectors should be added to the Bush Administration’s Homeland Security package, but Duluth-Superior Port Director Davis Helberg says protecting a port city is more complicated than that.
“How do you stop a 14 foot fishing boat from coming alongside with explosives in the boat?”
Helberg says you can put a fence around every port and search ships, but he says that could put ports out of business.
“If containers were suddenly being inspected for days on end it would create huge, enormous backlogs at the port… this whole idea of just in time delivery would be defeated. It would be a great economic blow to the country and it would have an effect on world commerce.”
Right now, about 2% of all incoming cargo is inspected as it enters U.S. waterways.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Mike Simonson.