INTERESTING READ

BITEME · October 25, 2007

OSWEGO, N.Y. - From his office at the port here, Jonathan Daniels

stared at a watermark etched on the rocks that hug one of the

commercial piers - a thick dark line several inches above the surface

of Lake Ontario - and wondered how much lower the water would dip.

"What we need is some rain," said Mr. Daniels, director of the Port of

Oswego Authority, one of a dozen public port agencies on the United

States side of the Great Lakes. "The more we lose water, the less

cargo the ships that travel in the Great Lakes can carry, and each

time that happens, shipping companies lose money," he said.

"Ultimately, it's people like you and I who are going to pay the

price."

Water levels in the Great Lakes are falling; Lake Ontario, for

example, is about seven inches below where it was a year ago. And for

every inch of water that the lakes lose, the ships that ferry bulk

materials across them must lighten their loads by 270 tons - or

540,000 pounds - or risk running aground, according to the Lake

Carriers' Association, a trade group for United States-flag cargo

companies.

As a result, more ships are needed, adding millions of dollars to

shipping companies' operating costs, experts in maritime commerce

estimate.

"When a ship leaves a dock, and it's not filled to capacity, it's the

same as a plane leaving an airport with empty seats: It cuts into

their earning capacity," said Richard D. Stewart, a co-director of the

Transportation and Logistics Research Center at the University of

Wisconsin-Superior.

"Because it's mostly raw materials we're talking about, the average

consumer may see an increase in pennies in the price they pay for,

say, a new car or washing machine," Dr. Stewart said. For major

manufacturers or firms managing big projects, however, the increase in

transportation costs "is much more significant," he said.

The port of Oswego receives scraps of aluminum from Canada, which are

rolled into sheets at a local plant and sent to car manufacturers; soy

beans for a bio-diesel plant in nearby Fulton; and parts for windmills

that are used to generate power on a farm south of Canandaigua Lake,

near Rochester, said L. Michael Treadwell, director of Operation

Oswego County, a nonprofit economic development agency. The windmill

parts arrive from Brazil and Indonesia, in ships that enter Lake

Ontario through the St. Lawrence Seaway, which connects the lake to

the Atlantic Ocean.

The port also handles soy beans grown in central New York and sent to

the Middle East, and it receives potash, a mineral used in fertilizer,

and road salt, which are distributed by truck and rail to companies

across the Eastern United States.

The water levels in all five Great Lakes - Superior, Michigan, Huron,

Erie and Ontario - are below long-term averages and are likely to stay

that way until at least March, according to the Army Corps of

Engineers. (The same is true at Lake St. Clair, which straddles the

border between the state of Michigan and the province of Ontario and

is between Lake Huron and Lake Erie; it is not considered one of the

Great Lakes, although it is part of the Great Lakes system.)

Most environmental researchers say that low precipitation, mild

winters and high evaporation, due largely to a lack of heavy ice

covers to shield warmer lake waters from the colder air above, are

depleting the lakes. The Great Lakes follow a natural cycle, their

levels rising in the spring, peaking in the summer and reaching a low

in the winter, as the evaporation rate rises.

In the past two years, evaporation has been higher than average, and

not enough rain and snow have fallen in the upper lakes - Superior,

Michigan and Huron - which supply water to the lower lakes, to restore

the system to its normal levels, said Keith Kompoltowicz, a

meteorologist at the Corps of Engineers' office in Detroit, which

monitors water levels in the lakes. "Mother Nature is largely the

driving force on what the water levels are, and it plays a large role

in what we project water levels to be," Mr. Kompoltowicz said.

The International Joint Commission, which advises the United States

and Canada on water resources, is conducting a $17 million, five-year

study to determine whether the shrinking of the Great Lakes is related

to the seasonal rise-and-fall cycles or is a result of climate change,

said Greg McGillis, a spokesman for the commission. A final report is

expected in March 2012.

Lake Ontario's water level can be regulated through releases from a

dam on the United States-Canada border, which allowed the lake to

maintain its normal levels until May, Mr. McGillis said. Then a

drought hit, and the releases became less generous, said Robert

O'Gorman, supervisor of the United States Geological Survey field

station here. The drought and the lower inflows from the upper lakes,

diminished Lake Ontario's water level, he said.

Lake Ontario stood at 244.1 feet as of Wednesday - 3 inches below

where it was at the beginning of the month, 5 inches below last

month's average and about a foot below last year's average. The water,

however, is still about 2 feet above the lake's low of 242.19 feet,

registered in 1934, according to the Corps of Engineers.

The picture is just as serious in the upper Great Lakes and is

particularly grave in Lake Superior, where water levels have hovered

below average since 1998 and, based on provisional data, set record

lows in August and September. It is the longest stretch of below-

average readings at Lake Superior since the Corps of Engineers started

tracking the Great Lakes' levels in 1918.

On average, 240 million tons of cargo travel across the Great Lakes

every year. The United States fleet circulating in the Great Lakes has

63 ships, which have lost a total of 8,000 tons of cargo capacity for

every inch of water the lakes have fallen below normal this year, said

James H. I. Weakley, president of the carriers' association. Those

8,000 tons, he said, correspond to enough iron ore to produce 6,000

cars, or enough coal to provide electricity to the Detroit area for

three hours, or enough stone to build 24 houses.

Mark W. Barker, president of Interlake Steamship Company, said the

nine ships his company operated made about 50 trips a year across the

Great Lakes, and the larger ones have transported 1,800 tons less per

trip this year compared with last year - the equivalent of losing an

entire ship's capacity over the length of a season.

"We get paid by the ton, so we're losing a lot of revenue per trip,

and we're just going to have to reclaim that loss by increasing our

rates," said Mr. Barker, whose family has owned the company since

1987. "It's either doing that or risk the business."

The Great Lakes region is home to about 70 percent of the steel

industry in North America and about half of the heavy manufacturing in

the United States, Mr. Weakley said.

Here in Oswego, a city of 18,000 residents that is 40 miles north of

Syracuse, the port has acquired renewed significance in the past two

years, largely because of a budding renewable energy sector that

depends in part on lake shipments. The area's economy has struggled

since the decline of its agricultural-based industries, like brewing,

began in the 1970s.

Mr. Daniels, the port director, said that water transportation was

still one of the most efficient alternatives for companies that rely

on bulk cargo, and that Oswego was banking "on the water coming back

to the lakes."

"If the low levels in the Great Lakes are a result of global warming,

I don't know," he said. "What I know is that we can't control nature.

All we can do is hope for rain."

Correction: October 24, 2007

An article on Monday about falling water levels in the Great Lakes

reversed the relative temperatures of the water and the air in winter,

a differential that causes evaporation. Environmental researchers say

evaporation in the Great Lakes is higher than normal because, lacking

heavy ice cover during the recent mild winters, the warmer lake water

is not protected from the colder air above - not the other way around.

Deano · October 25, 2007

Perfect for them, they found way to legitimize a way to make more money, by charging more. And if the water levels were to go higher than normal, I very much doubt that prices would be going down because they would be able to haul more. More scare tactics to justify price increases. Where does it end.

Joey · October 25, 2007

Ya well if they need more ships to carry the extra cargo they make more pollution which makes global warming which changes the weather which makes the summers milder which makes the water levels low, gasp, and so on and so on and so on........

Any excuse will do ya I spose :rolleyes: :wallbash: