Report shows Great Lakes shipping economic impact

JOHN FLESHER

Asso­ci­ated Press

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. — Cargo ship­ping in the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River nav­i­ga­tion sys­tem sup­ports 227,000 jobs and pumps bil­lions into the U.S. and Cana­dian economies, says an industry-funded report released Tuesday.

The study describes marine shipping’s rela­tion to a vari­ety of indus­tries in the region, includ­ing steel­mak­ing, farm­ing, con­struc­tion and power gen­er­a­tion. It says ship­ping over water saves about $3.6 bil­lion a year in com­par­i­son to over­land trans­port costs. More than 160 mil­lion met­ric tons of cargo moves each year on the water­way, which extends 2,300 miles from the Atlantic to the west­ern Lake Supe­rior port of Duluth, Minn.

“This report bears out what we’ve long known — that the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Sea­way is cru­cial to the U.S. econ­omy,” Trans­porta­tion Sec­re­tary Ray LaHood said. He described water ship­ping as “the sin­gle most fuel-efficient and cost-effective way to haul goods from one place to another.”

Ships haul a vari­ety of bulk mate­ri­als on the Great Lakes, their con­nect­ing chan­nels and the St. Lawrence River. Among them are iron ore, coal, stone, salt, sugar, train, steel, wind tur­bine parts and heavy machinery.

Some envi­ron­men­tal groups have ques­tioned the wis­dom of allow­ing ocean­go­ing ves­sels to enter the Great Lakes. The bal­last water they dis­charge in port has intro­duced inva­sive species such as zebra and quagga mus­sels, which are believed to have caused bil­lions in dam­ages by clog­ging intake pipes, desta­bi­liz­ing the food web and pro­mot­ing run­away algae growth.

The study by Mar­tin Asso­ciates, an eco­nomic con­sult­ing firm in Lan­caster, Pa., found ocean ships — known as “sal­ties” — con­tribute much less to the regional econ­omy than the fleet of U.S. and Cana­dian ships that remain in the area. Even so, transoceanic ves­sels pro­vide a cru­cial direct link between the Great Lakes region and over­seas ports, said Steve Fisher, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Amer­i­can Great Lakes Ports Association.

“They enable our farm­ers to export grain and sell their prod­ucts over­seas,” Fisher said. “They’re essen­tial to help­ing our man­u­fac­tur­ers com­pete overseas.”

Thom Cmar, an attor­ney for the Nat­ural Resources Defense Coun­cil, said the report was “extra­or­di­nar­ily one-sided.”

“It’s unde­ni­able that ship­ping has a big eco­nomic foot­print, but the bet­ter ques­tion is what are the alter­na­tives and what are the invest­ments that need to be made going for­ward to deal with the down­sides of ship­ping,” Cmar said.

Based on 2010 data from 32 ports in the region, the study found that Great Lakes ship­ping gen­er­ated $33.5 bil­lion in busi­ness rev­enue and $4.6 bil­lion in fed­eral, state, provin­cial and local tax revenues.

The indus­try employed 92,923 peo­ple such as dock­work­ers and ship crew mem­bers. Their spend­ing gen­er­ated an addi­tional 66,005 jobs through busi­nesses in the region, the report said. It cred­ited pur­chases by busi­nesses sup­ply­ing ser­vices at marine ter­mi­nals and ports with sup­port­ing 67,905 other jobs.

Pre­vi­ous stud­ies by John Tay­lor, then a pro­fes­sor Grand Val­ley State Uni­ver­sity, found that cut­ting off ocean ship­ping on the Great Lakes would boost trans­porta­tion costs in the region by $54.9 mil­lion a year — a small frac­tion of the dam­age done by inva­sive species that hitch­hike to the lakes in bal­last water.

“Pol­i­cy­mak­ers need to look at the ben­e­fits of ocean ship­ping into the Great Lakes ver­sus the costs,” Tay­lor, now an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of busi­ness at Wayne State Uni­ver­sity in Detroit, said Tuesday.

Fisher said reg­u­la­tions requir­ing ocean­go­ing ships to dump bal­last water and rinse their tanks at sea were help­ing shut out inva­sive species. Fed­eral reg­u­la­tions and tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tions to fur­ther cleanse the tanks are in the works.

“We’re look­ing for a win-win sit­u­a­tion — a health marine indus­try that sup­ports jobs while min­i­miz­ing its envi­ron­men­tal foot­print,” he said.

Posted by AP News on Oct 18 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.