POLICY
SHIPPING CALLS FOR HIGH WATER SOLUTIONS THAT PROTECT SEAWAY TRADE CORRIDOR BY JULIA FIELDS
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igh water levels are wreaking havoc across the Great LakesSt. Lawrence region, damaging shoreline residential, business and port infrastructure and threatening the operation of the bi-national trade and transportation corridor – the St. Lawrence Seaway. During the past year, the rising water levels have continuously led to calls to “open the floodgates” at one dam on the St. Lawrence Seaway to lower Lake Ontario levels. This move would create fast-moving, unsafe currents that would stop marine shipping and cost the Canadian and American economies up to USD $193 million (CAN $250 million) lost business revenues per week – impacting farmers, steel and manufacturing employees, miners and construction workers and the myriad of others whose livelihoods depend on the cargo carried on the waterway.
Moses-Saunders dam has little impact on high water problem Scientific evidence from the International Lake Ontario-St. Lawrence River Board demonstrates that outflow levels at Moses-Saunders dam have little impact on the problem, lowering the Lake by centimetres only to have more water come flooding in from Lake Erie and the other overflowing Great Lakes. During the winter months, the River Board let out as much water as
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it could without impacting municipal water intakes, engineering works and causing ice jams. Much of that progress was wiped out by two days of heavy rainfall. Any outflow increase at this dam increases water levels in Montreal (which are also impacted by water from the Ottawa River), and also draws down water levels on Lake St. Lawrence, where extremely low water levels are expected to return. With all the different stakeholders at risk there is often very little room to manoeuvre. The River Board had to adjust outflow levels 28 times just in January. “It’s time for politicians to start working with all the affected stakeholders on smart, effective solutions for high water levels. Shutting down or interrupting Canadian, American and international trade on the St. Lawrence Seaway and further damaging the economy and our nations’ global trading reputation should never be an option,” says Bruce Burrows, President and CEO of the Chamber of Marine Commerce. Twenty-five per cent of all Canadian grain exports transported on bulk vessels travel through the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River waterway. U.S. and Canadian industries specifically located their mines, plants and grain terminals on the waterway and have organized their entire supply chains around using marine shipping to transport huge volumes of materials and products within North America and to and from overseas.
With one Seaway ship able to carry as much as 963 truck loads, marine shipping is both the most cost-efficient and environmentally-sound option. For many mines, quarries and steel and other manufacturing plants – there is no alternative transportation infrastructure network waiting in the wings. “These businesses will be scrambling to find thousands of trucks to fill the gap at extra cost and/or dealing with shortages and lost business,” says Burrows. “With ships producing 500% less carbon per tonne kilometre than trucks, the sad irony is that interrupting Seaway shipping would actually contribute to exacerbating the problem that many scientists are linking to the huge swings in precipitation in the Great Lakes – climate change.”
Marine shipping is already feeling the pain of high water In 2019, marine shipping worked diligently with stakeholders for a solution to ensure safe navigation at record outflow levels from Moses-Saunders dam for five months to help lower Lake Ontario, taking on 26 mitigation measures that caused shipping delays, lost cargo business and millions of dollars of extra operating costs. Throughout the winter, the Chamber has been working with ship captains, the St. Lawrence Seaway and experts in Canada and the United States to identify technology and further mitigation measures that
