Lack of Stimulus Angers Great Lakes Shipping

The Great Lakes shipping industry is “in a state of shock” that there are no federal U.S. stimulus dollars for building the long-sought new lock at Sault Ste. Marie, Mich.

“The shovel-ready project (for a second lock at the connection of Lake Superior with the lower four Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Seaway) could have created thousands of good-paying jobs, almost overnight,” the Great Lakes Maritime Task Force said in a statement April 28.

The anger was directed at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for not including the lock project among those to be funded from its share of dollars from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

The Corps had long been in support of a second lock at Sault Ste. Marie, had listed it as a Corps priority and had produced a recent study showing Great Lakes shipping important to the U.S. economy, said the Task Force, a coalition of all participants in Great Lakes shipping.

The Great Lakes shipping industry finds the Corps’ decision “incomprehensible,” said GLMTF president Donald Cree. He said Congress “has strongly supported the project, authorizing the lock at full Federal expense in 2007 and approving tens of millions of dollars in Federal construct ion funding,” including $17 million in FY09.

The Sault Ste. Marie connection handles more than 80 million tons of cargo each year, half being iron ore for steel production and other major elements being coal for steel plants and grain for export.

A failure of the venerable Poe Lock there would halt the carrying capacity of 70 percent of the U.S.-flag Great Lakes fleet and “even more blast furnaces will go cold,” James Weakley, president of the Cleveland-based Lake Carriers’ Association, said.

There has been a campaign for many years to twin the Poe Lock, built in the 19th century and rebuilt in 1968. The Poe Lock is the only one of the Soo Locks that can handle large lake vessels.

Contact Courtney Tower at ctower@sympatico.ca .