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New locks study needed for Soo before work can be planned

 
By KEVIN WALKER
Michigan Correspondent

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Shippers and others are hoping a new lock at the Soo Locks may finally happen in the foreseeable future. In order to get one, though, a new cost-benefit analysis of such a project will have to be completed.
The Soo Locks, operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, are located in the northeastern part of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, with Canada on the eastern side. The locks allow shipping to proceed to and from Lake Superior and the lower Great Lakes.
There’s a 21-foot difference between the lakes, with Lake Superior being higher. Before any locks had been built, cargo had to be portaged around rapids at the St. Marys River.
According to some recent articles in the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News, an old cost-benefit analysis to determine the suitability of a new lock determined such a project wouldn’t be worth it; however, that study was flawed, according to people quoted in the reports. A new study must be done before a new lock can be built.
“The study has to be done correctly,” said Ed Wolking Jr., executive director of the Great Lakes Metro Chambers Coalition. “It all needs to be revisited.”
Today, there are three operational locks at the Soo Locks, but only two that operate full-time: the MacArthur and Poe. A third, the Davis, can only accommodate smaller ships and is used intermittently. Boats larger than 730 feet long and 76 feet wide are too big for the MacArthur lock and must use the Poe.
As a result, the Poe transited far more freight, 63.8 million tons in 2007, according to Corps statistics. The MacArthur transited only 17.8 million tons.
According to the most recent data made available by the Corps, the locks are used to transport many different kinds of commodities and materials.
These include iron ore, fuel, coal and a number of agricultural and ag-related commodities and materials. For the 2007 shipping season, 43.7 million tons of iron ore passed through the locks, 576,025 tons of potassic fertilizer, 7.8 million tons of wheat and 109,542 tons of soybeans.
Other shipped agricultural commodities included vegetables and produce, oats, grain mill products, flaxseed, oilseeds, and barley and rye.
According to the 2007 Soo Locks traffic report, produced jointly by the Corps and the Lake Carriers Assoc., no boats were delayed by lock and hardware malfunctions in the 2007 shipping season, which ran from Mar. 25, 2007-Jan. 15, 2008. According to a Sept. 6 Free Press article, a recent analysis it conducted shows the number of delays has been on the increase.
Over the summer the MacArthur lock was shut down for 20 days for maintenance. During that 20-day period, the Poe was also unexpectedly shut down for a brief period. Wolking said the boats being made today are bigger than ever and even mid-size boats are having trouble transiting the MacArthur.
A Poe-size lock at Sault Ste. Marie is “time critical,” said a June 30 press release from the Lake Carriers Assoc. Eight out of every 10 tons of cargo moving through the Soo Locks transit the Poe, and that chamber is now getting rather old. The modern Poe lock was built in 1968.
The project remains stalled by a “flawed study” that assumes the railroads could move the cargo if the Poe went down for a lengthy period of time.
“Thanks to (U.S.) Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) and Rep. Dan Benishek (R-Mich.), the Corps is reevaluating the benefit-cost ratio and prospects for twinning the Poe Lock are the best they have been in years,” the June 30 press release states.
But according to an Aug. 30 article in the Free Press, despite having been authorized in 1986, the Soo Locks project is in competition with other similar infrastructure projects. These include the Herbert Hoover Dike in Lake Okeechobee, Fla.; Olmsted Locks and Dam, in Illinois and Kentucky on the Ohio River; and Locks and Dams 2, 3 and 4, in Pennsylvania on the Monongahela River.
9/16/2015