Shipping routes, and saving the Great Lakes
April 23, 2007
Savings from opening up the Great Lakes to ocean-going traffic total about $55 million each year. The cost for dealing with just two of the 183 invasive species introduced by salt-water ballast — zebra and quagga mussels — is estimated at $2 billion.
Dan Egan, at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, has a very good article on salt-water shipping on the Great Lakes, courtesy of the St. Lawrence Seaway, created in 1959.
Evidence suggests that the costs of the biological pollution gushing from the ship-steadying ballast tanks far outweigh the benefits of maintaining the world’s largest freshwater system as a nautical highway for saltwater traffic.
A draft study from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, meanwhile, indicates that recreational boats dwarf overseas freighters in terms of economic importance to the region, yet the recreation industry is entirely dependent on the very waters the salties continue to irreversibly pollute.
The overseas shipping industry acknowledges there is a problem and says it’s time to pass a new federal law to phase in ballast treatment systems. But the industry is burning much of the lingering sympathy it has enjoyed by suing the State of Michigan over its efforts to address the ballast problem on its own with a new law restricting contaminated discharges.
At first glance, it’s shaping up as a traditional political fight, with the expected actors on each side of the issue. But what jumps out at me is that the Army Corps of Engineers is seriously acknowledging the importance of ecological sustainability to the economy, and that there are substantial benefits — even monetary ones — to things other than massive (and admittedly cool) civil engineering projects.
Even without accounting for the unforeseen costs of large-scale projects — as in, things like dropping water levels (probably caused by the Corps of Engineers accidentally opening a drain while dredging the St. Clair River in the 1960s) are never included in the initial estimates of a project’s cost — environmentally-friendly policies that benefit sportsmen, fishermen, and recreational users of the Great Lakes, are sound economics.
If you’ve read Cadillac Desert, which is one of the best political books ever written (and also an entertaining read), you’ll know that the Corps of Engineers is an epitome of bad government. It’s a potent combination of techno-enthusiasm for big, exciting civil engineering works; and political graft.
To take but one recent example, when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, the Corps was in the middle of a $748 million project to replace the locks on the Industrial Canal. But the project would not have strengthened the levees; it would have caused massive environmental damage to the poor neighborhoods adjacent to the canal; and its (only) beneficiary would have been the only shipyard on the north side of the locks, a company (Bollinger Shipyards) that has given out over half a million dollars in political donations over the last few election cycles, 99% of it to local and out-of-state Republicans.
The Republicans are the guilty party today, but the problem is bipartisan — in the 1930s, LBJ’s early political career was funded by the ambitious owner of an up-and-coming construction company that is today known as Halliburton, and in return Johnson rewarded his benefactors with huge amounts of taxpayer money funnelled into dubious infrastructure ventures.
President Carter’s early attempts to develop a sane system of infrastructure building and maintenance, and to weaken the Corps of Engineers and their western counterpart, the Bureau of Reclamation, irredeemably alienated the Congressional leadership and helped bring down his presidency.
So if things are changing, it’s a big deal. However, the MJS article continues:
Yet commercial navigation clearly remains the Army Corps’ priority. Just a few years ago, the corps suggested looking at a $10 billion expansion of the Seaway to accommodate bigger vessels. The agency backed off after a public outcry.
Oops. Two steps forward; one step back.
In another good sign, the environmentalists can claim a legitimately bipartisan coalition that is trying to solve the problem, both at the state and federal level. There’s often been a reasonably bipartisan approach to environmental issues at state levels, but the reason the opportunity exists at the federal level is because people like Tom DeLay and James Inhofe are no longer in charge.
The MJS reports that, along with U.S. Rep. Vernon Ehlers (R-Mich.), “U.S. Rep. Jim Oberstar (D-Minn.), chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, is also pushing for a federal ballast law. Similar federal bills have gone nowhere for the past several years, but he is confident a Democrat-controlled Congress can get something done”.