Editorial: Ports Offer More As Transport Demand Grows

How healthy are U.S. ports these days? A quick review of our “Ports and Terminals” issue April 18 offers up a very good clue. Many are expanding services to meet transportation demands.

It is easy to conclude from reading stories about Missouri River water wars and the controversy over Upper Mississippi/Illinois River proposals by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that water transportation is sick, that its headed for the grave. Nothing is further from the truth. Towing companies may be trying to shake off a serious headache, but they are by no means folding up their tent.

If all were doom and gloom, why would Fullen Dock & Warehouse, Memphis, Tenn., announce in a full-page color, front-page ad in the WJ that container shipping is now available in Memphis?

Why is it that “rubber, “once transported to the Midwest entirely by truck, is now one of the newest commodities to take advantage of barge transportation” (WJ April 18)? And why, since May 2004, has Ingram Barge Company been transporting natural raw rubber from New Orleans to Mt. Vernon, Ill., for Continental Tire North America Inc.? Because there is a need!

Why is it that Louisiana’s Millenium Port Authority concluded that if the Port of New Orleans develops the container-on-barge concept aggressively and utilizes the Lower Mississippi River, the port can increase its movement of containers through Louisiana by eight fold over the next 20 years? One has to conclude port officials are serious about this. The port’s full-page color ad in the April 18 issue announced “Container on Barge Service has arrived at the Port of New Orleans.” Why? Because there is a need!

Indeed, the signs are there to be examined. The Port of Will County, the newest and largest port near Chicago, is open for business and is talking with Osprey Line about the possibility of being involved in the container-on-barge business. The Port of Little Rock, with its new slackwater harbor, experienced a record year in 2003 and has seen a 20 percent increase in business in 2005. Good things are also happening at the Tulsa Port of Catoosa and at the Port of Muskogee. All of these developments are taking place because there is a need!

The towing industry is but one cog in the water transportation business. Admittedly, every cog is vital and depends on the others. Due to a variety of reasons, some related to flexing and contracting of companies in the towing business, this cog is going through another evolution. Readers will remember times when there were so many barges industry didn’t know what to do with them. The condition followed a boom period when investors around the country put their money into barges. They overbuilt. There have been other periods when business demands and short barge inventories brought on barge-building booms. Sometimes serious extended adverse weather conditions in the winter froze rivers or, in summer, lowered water levels. Neglected navigation facilities that suddenly go bad and result in unplanned lock closures also take their toll on the river business. Demand requires adjustments in the barge-building industry.

These conditions, however, do not stop the nation’s transportation demand from growing. Barges once provided cheaper transport than ox and wagon. Steamboats improved matters. Railroads then killed off steamboat operations. Federal Barge Lines came along in the 1950s and opened up the towboat era and challenged the railroads along the waterways.

While some critics would like us to believe that river transportation is dying, the truth is that environmentally friendly barge transportation may play “environmental savior” to the nation. The highways are clogged with big trucks, and both infrastructure and driving conditions suffer. But now, railroads cannot keep up with demands, and there is no place to expand. Adding thousands more trucks to the highways is not the best choice.

Handled properly, barge transportation can be greatly expanded to accommodate growing needs and still leave the river clean and suitable for recreation. And it should be that way. Barge company officials must see to it that they are good neighbors. After all, they share waterways; they don’t own them.

We write principally about the Mississippi and its tributaries, because it is this vast midsection of the country where most of the towing service takes place. But progress is nationwide at ports. We can marvel at the aerial view of ports like Jacksonville, Fla., and other U.S. coast locations. But container-on-barge is no longer just a dream for inland ports. Past failures occurred because transportation demands were not adequate to justify service on inland waterways or operators did not hit on workable arrangements. But now demand exists, and port officials are waking up to the opportunities.

We keep wondering why environmental organizations don’t also wake up to the reality that the towing industry can help them achieve the pure air and pure water goals they continue to tout. As we read in the news these days, federal dollars are flowing freely toward ecosystem improvement.

As in the European Union, water transport can contribute much toward improving the quality of life in the United States. But we do have to get by the naysayers.

The Waterways Journal encourages letters to the editor.
Have something on your mind?
Send letters to: jshoulberg@waterwaysjournal.net.
(Please indicate whether or not your letter is intended for publication.)