DREDGING BEGINS: Delaware R. Ports Are Saved
BY TONY WEST/ The first ton of silt dredged from the shipping channel in the Delaware River Monday, to deepen it by five feet, was a bite felt around the world. Already, maritime shippers have begun to adjust to the news that Philadelphia will stay in the game of international trade for a generation or more to come.
“This is a great day for the city, the state and the region as well as the port,” said US Sen. Arlen Specter in a conference call from his Washington office. Together with his colleague Sen. John Heinz, Specter began the arduous process of lobbying to deepen the Delaware River in 1983. Time and traffic have proven their decision was right.
John Estey, Chairman of Philadelphia Regional Port Authority, echoed the Senator’s elation, calling the deepening of the channel to 45 feet “the most important project in the history of the river.”
It will produce 125,000 jobs, many of them permanent, spread across Delaware, South Jersey and Eastern Pennsylvania as far north as Scranton. It will ensure the Philadelphia region remains a world-class competitor for trade in the global economy.
Even more urgently, though, it will avoid the fate that awaited the city if the project did not go through. Current trends in seaborne commerce are about to make Philadelphia’s 40-foot ports obsolete. If that is allowed
to happen, huge amounts of business would be diverted to Philadelphia’s competitors and lost forever.
Our main competitors – New York and Baltimore Harbors – are well aware of this fact. Both ports already offer many berths ranging from 42 feet to 50 feet in draft. These are particularly attractive to the burgeoning containerized intermodal trade, which economists say is the wave of the future.
These two cities would be more than happy to eat Philadelphia’s lunch. Great political pressure has been applied for decades by interests in other states, especially in New Jersey, by fair means or foul, to throttle the Delaware River Project. Commencement of dredging was delayed until Monday morning when a three-judge federal appeals court upheld US District Judge Sue Robinson’s ruling against a lawsuit by the State of Delaware, which had raised procedural concerns about the project’s environmental safety.
“I am happy to see this project moving forward,” said Congressman Bob Brady, who has kept a watchful eye on the port’s fate. “This is the most important job creator for our region and I’m glad the Court saw through the stall tactics of the dredging opponents. This project is environmentally sound and critical to the economy.”
Environmental “concerns” have been raised throughout much of the project’s 37-year history. In the end, they haven’t amounted to anything, although New Jersey as well as Delaware authorities have periodically protested dredging presented a vague potential threat, and the Delaware Riverkeeper Maya van Rostum opposes deepening the channel.
“Environmental issues were thoroughly checked out by US Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers. The project has passed muster. There have been some court actions; they are now over,” shrugged Specter.
Without very specific indications, it is unlikely dredging the Delaware deeper poses an environmental threat. There are two reasons why this is so. First, many other ports have been dredged to a depth of 50 feet; secondly, the Delaware itself is routinely dredged to maintain its 40-foot depth. Is there some toxin in the silt or bedrock of the Delaware that is uniquely dangerous when dredged – compared to the stuff dumped by the Hudson River into New York Bay, or the Susquehanna River into Chesapeake Bay? Opponents have had 35 years to look for it, but have not produced it.
Dredging may even help solve another environmental problem of great antiquity in Pennsylvania. In the Anthracite Region of Pennsylvania’s northeastern mountains are massive cavities left by abandoned coalmines of yesteryear. In a creative ploy to defuse New Jersey’s fears its dwindling wetlands would be smothered under 16 million cubic yards of dredging spoils, Gov. Ed Rendell has arranged for 10 million cu. yd. to fill an enormous stripmine that disfigures Hazleton, Pa.
Specter is contributing a piece of legislative legerdemain by pressing an amendment to a federal measure that pays for mine reclamation, so it can be used to fund transporting the Delaware River spoils to Hazleton. As much as $140 million of these funds may be available by 2-014, Specter said.
And it doesn’t have to stop with Hazleton, Specter went on. By some estimates, as much as 50 million cu. yd. could be accommodated by mine reclamation in Northeastern Pennsylvania. Environmentally, “we can kill two birds with one stone,” Specter pointed out.“We have a place to take the dredged material and also fill for abandoned mines.”
Work on the channel-deepening will create tens of thousands of jobs for many years, in industries that may not be obvious at first glance. Carpenters leader Ed Coryell, for instance, noted his members will be put to work making pilings for the project. Specter estimated removal and transportation of the dredged material alone will provide up to 20,000 jobs. “These are well-paying jobs, $80,000 a year,” he noted.
Long-term job growth, however, depends on growth in port business. And most port businesses are very big businesses. Running a commercial shipping fleet is much like running a navy. The latest generation of container carriers cost as much as $20 billion to build. In order to take advantage of economies of scale and reduce operating costs, ocean carriers, particularly container carriers, are building larger and larger vessels. The newest container ships have capacities of over 10,000 TEUs (20-ft. equivalent units), and the vessels are more than 1,000 ft. long.
Port facilities to accommodate them are equally stupendous. In Baltimore, for instance, Ports America has agreed to invest $105.5 million to build a fourth berth at Seagirt. This one will be 50 feet deep, with four new cranes able to handle the massive container ships expected to begin moving through an expanded Panama Canal in 2014.
Investments like these take years to organize, plan and deploy. That’s why major shippers are all making decisions today based on where they need to be in 2020. Likewise, all ports that wish to contend for these shippers’ business in 2030 are taking action today.
Overall, the maritime shipping industry is trending toward ever-larger investments in ever-fewer ports. So while a deeper port, shrewdly managed and marketed, can open new horizons for our region’s commerce, its most important accomplishment will be simply to keep this entire industry from being wiped out by more-aggressive cities around us the East Coast. When all the other hotels get HDTV, it’s time for your hotel to upgrade as well. In the end, this is a mission of survival for Philadelphia’s economy.
