By James Heinz
Until the coronavirus hit, 2020 looked like it would be another robust year for American Great Lakes shipping.
The Lake Carriers’ Association reports that shipping during the US-flag sailing season was strong in 2019, beating the five-year average by nearly 5 percent across all cargo categories, and the year beat 2018 tonnage by 7.5 percent.
However, a mid-year look at cargo totals through June of last year showed that limestone stood at nine million net tons, down 16 percent from 2019 and 7.4 percent from the five-year average, the association said in its 2020 State of the Lakes report.
The seventeen million tons of iron ore moved on the Great Lakes through June was 15 percent below 2019 and 13.4 percent below the five-year rolling average, per the association. Mid-year raw steel production in the US stood at 66.1 percent capacity down from 80.9 percent at the same time in 2019.
“The US-flag Great Lakes fleet is feeling the pinch,” the report said.
The Lake Carriers’ Association marks its 141st anniversary of its founding in 2021, tracing its roots to 1880 when schooners were the main mode of shipping on the Great Lakes.
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The aim of this voluntary alliance of steamship companies is to reduce navigation hazards on the Great Lakes; recommend improvements in harbors, channels, docks, and lighthouses; and help recruit and train vessel personnel.
The association has forty-six vessels enrolled as members. That includes self-propelled, self-unloading dry bulk carriers, articulated tug/barge units both self-unloading and deck barges, so-called “straight deck” bulk carriers without self-unloading equipment, the vehicle ferry BADGER, the supply boat OJIBWAY, and cement carriers.
The report states that Covid-19 struck just as crews were arriving last March for “fit out,” the process of getting vessels ready to sail following winter lay-up and maintenance.
“At the time, the Centers for Disease Control and the United States Coast Guard had no planning for the domestic maritime ramifications of this pandemic,” the association stated.
“It was left to Lake Carriers and its members to fill the planning and preparedness void. Strong communications built on solid facts, short and long-term planning, and vessel operators who understood the seriousness of the situation from the start and the need to keep sailing has been key throughout.”
(It’s now January, and I wondered if the association’s member crews still had been able to stay free of the virus. Tom
Rayburn, director of the association’s environmental and regulatory affairs, responded that as the navigational locks
at Sault Ste. Marie, Mich., closed in January, which is generally the end of the sailing season, it still was the case. He
said, “there has been no known cases of Covid-19 on any LCA members’ vessels. This is definitely a fact we take pride in.”)
Despite being a mild winter last year, with warmer than average temperatures on the Great Lakes, ice still formed and commercial vessels still became stuck. The association said that the “Canadian Coast Guard icebreaking assistance for the US-flag fleet and the Canadian fleet in shared waterways was virtually nonexistent. As their two icebreakers struggled to get back into the Great Lakes from the St. Lawrence Seaway and Atlantic coast, the US icebreakers were diverted from US waterways where they were helping US ships, to break ice in Canadian waters for Canadian ships.”
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The association’s annual report said that Congress appropriated four million dollars last year for the Coast Guard to hire professional employees required to procure a desperately needed icebreaker. That brought the total to fourteen million dollars.
The report said congressional pressure to codify the Coast Guard’s icebreaking mission into law was a critical move forward. “It’s currently an Executive Order that was signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1936 after the government realized war was coming and the importance of moving raw materials during winter months would be vital to national security,” according to the association.
The Soo Locks are continuing to receive government funding for a new large lock. So far $241.6 million have been invested, the report said. “Shovels are finally digging as work has begun on deepening the upstream approach to accommodate today’s vessels. Five-and-a-half feet of bedrock, which will total about 300,000 cubic yards, or the equivalent of 30,000 dump trucks, is being removed. The approach walls contract will be awarded shortly with work commencing next spring.”
The Soo Locks are operated and maintained by the US Army Corps of Engineers. They enable ships to move between Lake Superior and the Lower Great Lakes.
The association said that an added thirty-seven million dollars were still needed for major rehabilitation projects and annual operations and maintenance on the fifty-one year old Poe Lock and seventy-eight year old World War II-era MacArthur Lock.
On the subject of ballast water, the report noted that the Vessel Incidental Discharge Act, signed into law in 2018, “holds promise to unsnarl years of tangled regulation.”
The final rules on management and discharge standards from the US Environmental Protection Agency were due this December. “Then the Coast Guard will take the reins to develop compliance and enforcement rules. The shared goal is protective and practical regulation,” per the report.
(Rayburn told me that the rules had not been finalized as of this month. “The Vessel Incidental Discharge Act of 2018
set that December timeframe,” he said, “but US EPA did not release for public comment their draft regulations until
October 26, 2020. The comment period closed on November 25. They have not yet issued their final regulations which
we do not now think will happen until later this winter. Following US EPA’s finalization of the regulations, that will start
the two-year clock ticking for the US Coast Guard to issue their draft and final regulations implementing US EPA’s
standards.”)
2020 also marked the 100th anniversary of the Merchant Marine Act of 1920. Commonly called the Jones Act, “the law mandates that vessels trading between US ports be built in America, owned by Americans, and crewed by Americans,” the report said.
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Adding to the Jones Act Great Lakes fleet, the report said the VanEnkevort Tug and Barge’s new articulated tug-barge, the MICHIGAN TRADER, set sail in August and was mated to the tug DIRK S. VANENKEVORT. The tug-barge was built by Fincantieri’s Bay Shipbuilding in Sturgeon Bay, Wis.
Updating previous reports, the association said that Interlake Steamship Company’s new self-propelled vessel’s keel laying ceremony was held in June at Fincantieri. The vessel was named the MARK W. BARKER after Interlake Steamship’s president. The BARKER is on track for a 2022 sailing.
The association complained that ten million cubic yards of sediment still clogged Great Lakes waterways. “Inches of depth in the channels and our ports matter,” the association report said.
The Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund, which gets its money from an ad valorem tax paid by shippers, “is the life blood of the US Army Corps of Engineers’ mission to keep the nation’s waterways and ports open to commercial navigation, including dredging,” the association said. Each year the Corps “must remove about 3.3 million cubic yards of sediment” which accumulates in the shipping channels, the report said.
Source
Photo: The articulted tug-barge, the MICHIGAN TRADER, is shown with the tug DIRK S. VANENKEVORT (right) November 17, 2020, at Fincantieri Bay Shipbuilding in Sturgeon Bay, Wis. Credit: Bob Kuhn
James Heinz is the Wisconsin Marine Historical Society’s acquisitions director. He became interested in maritime history as a kid watching Jacques Cousteau’s adventures on TV. He was a Great Lakes wreck diver until three episodes of the bends forced him to retire from diving. He was a University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee police officer for thirty years. He regularly flies either a Cessna 152 or 172.
