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magazine / ja09
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July/August 2009 issue |
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FEATURE
Inland superhighway (Page 2 of 4)
For half a century, the St. Lawrence Seaway has served as a vital artery for ships carrying the coal, grain and iron ore that fuelled Canada’s economy. But a sea change may be brewing.
By D’Arcy Jenish with photography by Martin Beaulieu
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Workers in
the engine room of the Spruceglen.
Photo: Martin Beaulieu |
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The most acute challenge facing the seaway is the global recession, which has dramatically reduced the volume
of goods moving on the system. Only 68 of the 103 vessels in the Canadian and American fleets were operating as of late
April, according to www.boatnerd.com, a website that closely tracks the Great Lakes shipping industry. The rest were tied
up in harbours.
| 'I like the work, but it’s kind of a love-hate thing. When you’re on the water, you can’t wait to go home. When you get home, you can’t wait to get back.’ |
The recession is compounding a long-term trend. Traffic volume dropped sharply during the economic
slump of the early 1980s and never fully recovered. For the past decade, the waterway has operated at about
60 percent of its capacity, in part because more than half of Canadian grain exports now move through ports
on the West Coast. Moreover, iron ore shipments, which peaked at about 20 million tonnes in
1977, now range from 12 million to 8.6 million tonnes annually due to restructuring and downsizing in the steel
industry. A typical 280-day shipping season begins in late March and runs until weather conditions deteriorate after
Christmas. In 2008, domestic and international vessels made 4,200 trips on the seaway and moved 40 million to
45 million tonnes of cargo. In the late 1970s, ships were carrying 66 million to 80 million tonnes annually.
Which way
to the seaway?
The St. Lawrence Seaway does more than move cargo. The historic waterway is used for cruises and pleasure boating, and it’s lined by parks and museums. Of course,
visitors can also spend hours watching the seaway’s locks lift massive freighters.
Recreational boaters should start at www.greatlakes-seaway.com for a primer
on how best to navigate the seaway. They should also consider a detour in Montréal to the Lachine Canal, which runs 14.5 kilometres from the city’s Old Port to Lac
Saint-Louis. Opened in 1825 to allow cargo ships to bypass the Lachine rapids, the national historic site is now a major tourist draw.
Sightseers can boat, canoe or kayak along the canal, or run the rapids in a jet boat. Some take to the water with surfboards; river surfing has its roots in Montréal.
Visitors who prefer dry land can cycle, walk or run on the paths that line the canal.
Further west along the seaway, one can travel through time at Upper Canada Village, an authentic 1800s outpost between Cornwall and Morrisburg, Ont., that recreates the life of
early settlers in the upper St. Lawrence River Valley. Watch costumed staff turn wool into clothing at the mill and fashion horseshoes in the blacksmith’s shop.
Continuing upstream, boat tours take visitors through the famed 1,000 Islands, which straddle the Canada-United States border. In the past, ships often sank in these shallow,
rocky waters, creating a mecca for scuba divers. The area is also home to St. Lawrence Islands National Park, which spans 80 kilometres of the St. Lawrence between Kingston and
Brockville.
Beyond these major attractors, one can simply meander along the seaway — by boat or car — and make countless stops along the way.
Deborah Mensah-Bonsu |
“When I got hired in 1978, there was a ship in your lock all the time, and one above and one below waiting to get in,”
says John Chalmers, the seaway’s senior operations coordinator, who started as a line handler on the locks of the
Welland Canal. “You were walking up and down the wall for eight hours straight, tying or untying ships.”
The age of the Canadian merchant fleet is another concern. Most of the vessels in service today were built in
domestic shipyards in the 1960s and 1970s, specifically for use on the seaway. They should be replaced, but shipbuilding
has virtually disappeared in this country, and the federal government imposes a 25 percent duty on vessels manufactured
offshore for Canadian companies — a sore point for many in the industry, who consider the duty a punitive
tax. “Fleet renewal must start now if we are to maintain a thriving shipping industry in Canada,” says Gerald Carter,
president and CEO of Montréal-based Canada Steamship Lines (CSL), which operates the Spruceglen.
The seaway is also under increased environmental scrutiny. Groups such as Buffalo-based
Great Lakes United, a coalition of Canadian and American organizations, have been critical
of the seaway and the shipping industry in recent years. This was triggered, in part, by
the spread of the notorious zebra mussel, a fingernail-sized mollusc native to the Caspian
Sea. Scientists believe that an ocean-going freighter flushed ballast water containing zebra
mussels into Lake St. Clair in the late 1980s. Since then, this prolific invader has infiltrated
the Great Lakes, as well as numerous rivers and smaller lakes, and has had a devastating
effect on ecosystems and infrastructure. Zebra mussels can achieve a density of several hundred
thousands per square metre and clog up water-intake pipes used by municipalities, steel manufacturers,
power companies and golf courses. New regulations are being implemented, and shipping companies
are adopting control measures, but the issue remains far from resolved.
Environmental groups have additional complaints about commercial navigation. They claim that the waves created
by passing ships contribute to shoreline erosion and disturb wildlife habitat, especially in the narrow channels of the
St. Lawrence, where fuel spills and other contaminants threaten drinking-water sources formillions of people. While
Canada and the United States have long imposed strict cleanfuel standards on automobiles, trucks, trains and construction
vehicles, environmentalists argue, they have ignored ships.
Most freighters burn bunker fuel, and they consume a lot of it — up to one tonne per hour when they’re sailing at full
speed with cargo holds loaded. A low-grade, high-sulphur derivative of refined petroleum, bunker fuel can contain up
to 45,000 parts per million (ppm) of sulphur; the limit is 80 ppm in the gasoline consumed by automobiles and as low
as 15 ppm in the diesel that locomotives, trucks and other heavy vehicles burn. The Canadian and American governments
are developing regulations to force shipping companies to reduce the sulphur content in their emissions by
96 percent, but they have until 2015 to meet the requirement.
“Sulphur air pollution in North America is a big enough issue for the two countries to act in a coordinated fashion,”
says Jennifer Nalbone, the navigation and invasive-species campaign director with Great Lakes United. “As the seaway
turns 50, it’s time for a reality check. Now is the perfect time to critically ask, ‘What changes does the maritime community
need to make to protect the Great Lakes and the economies that rely on them?’”
For their part, seaway officials and shipping company executives insist that their industry is getting a bad rap.
Since 2003, they have marketed the waterway as “Highway H2O” and have attempted to increase traffic by promoting
marine transportation as a safer, cheaper and greener alternative to trains and trucks, pointing out that one Great
Lakes freighter loaded with 25,000 tonnes of cargo is equivalent to 225 rail cars or 870 trucks. Highway H2O’s backers
contend that tomove one tonne of freight one kilometre, a train burns 2.2 times as much fuel as a ship and a truck
goes through 9.7 times as much. They also say that for every accident involving a ship, trains have 13.7 accidents
and trucks have 74.7.
Independent analysis supports many of these claims. Seven agencies, including Transport Canada and the United
States Department of Transportation, collaborated on 2007’s Great Lakes St. Lawrence Seaway Study. They concluded that the freight
moving on the seaway could not be transferred to roads and railways without causing massive
congestion and a significant increase in emissions. “The transportation sector as a whole contributes 27 percent of
total (North American) greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions,” the study says, “but less than three percent of all GHG
emissions come from shipping.”
The study also provided some economic perspective. Marine transport on the Great Lakes produces $3.4 billion
in business revenue annually and more than $4.3 billion in personal income. It also generates direct and indirect employment
for as many as 150,000 people in Canada and the United States.
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