Port of Wilmington officials on Monday updated Delaware’s Congressional delegation on the progress of the Delaware River deepening project that backers say will bring bigger ships and thousands of jobs to the region.
Senators Tom Carper (D-Delaware) and Chris Coons (D-Delaware) and Congressman John Carney (D-Delaware) rode on the Port of Wilmington tug Madeline out of a channel where freighters unload cargoes of bananas, into a stretch of the Delaware River that has already been dredged to a depth that is required for the bigger ships that officials say are essential for port’s competitiveness and the economy of the region.
Two sections of the 102-mile project have so far been completed, leaving about 40 percent of the ship channel at a depth that would be navigable by the larger freighters that are expected to be coming to the East Coast via the Panama Canal when its widening is completed in 2014 or 2015, and from across the Atlantic.
Without a deeper channel, officials say, the Port of Wilmington will miss out on a goldmine of foreign trade that will arrive on the bigger ships. A channel of 45 feet – about five feet deeper than at present – will allow Wilmington to compete with other major East Coast gateways including Baltimore and New York, both of are already deep enough to take the bigger ships.
The Delaware Congressional Delegation tours the dredging site.
The Delaware Congressional Delegation tours the dredging site.
Work on the next section, about 11 miles from the Walt Whitman Bridge to around the Commodore Barry Bridge, is scheduled to start in September, scraping up 1.2 million cubic yards of spoil at a cost of $14.5 million, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers which manages the project.
By March next year, about half of the channel will be deep enough to take the bigger ships but, because not all of it has to be dredged, about two-thirds of the money will still be needed, said Anthony De Pasquale, chief of operations for the Army Corps’ Philadelphia district..
The whole $250 million project is due for completion by 2017 but is heavily dependent on federal funding, some of which has yet to be appropriated, and which is subject to intense competition in an environment of severe budgetary constraints.
U.S. Senator Chris Coons said the increased trade that would come with bigger container ships is could create up to 75,000 direct and indirect jobs in the region over time as Wilmington lures more cargo away from ports like New York and Baltimore.
Because it’s closer to the Atlantic Ocean than some of its major competitors, Wilmington will be more attractive to shipping companies than other mid-Atlantic ports, Coons said.
“We are perfectly positioned to take a lot of growth in container ships,” he said.
The Army Corps argues that the completed dredging project will yield average annual benefits of $35 million, with average annual costs of $21 million, resulting in a benefit-cost ratio of 1.64.
Benefits will come in more efficient container and dry bulk vessels, more efficient loading, and reduced lighting, according to Corps’ calculations, which only take into account national – not local – benefits, and do not include jobs or tax revenues.
But the benefits will also come at a cost of environmental damage, said Maya Van Rossum of the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, an environmental group that sued the Army Corps in federal court, saying the Corps was violating federal environmental rules, but lost on appeal in July.
Dredging will raise the salt line, putting further pressure on already-threatened species including horseshoe crabs, and on the endangered red knot shore birds that depend on their eggs, Van Rossum said.
Projected economic benefits will be outweighed by $80 million a year in damage to oyster beds, she added.
Van Rossum also argued that deepening the channel to 45 feet will not accommodate the largest ships which need 55 or 60 feet of water to sail in, so undermining the purpose of the project at the expense of the environment. “Forty-five feet doesn’t get you there,” she said.
Ed Voigt, a spokesman for the Army Corps, acknowledged that some ships need a depth of more than 45 feet. “Not all of them will be able to use the channel,” he said.
Van Rossum said her group is considering its legal options, and argued that the project may yet be derailed by a lack of funding from the federal government and from Pennsylvania, which has so far been the only non-federal funder.
“This is not a done deal,” she told DFM News.
Thomas Keefer, deputy executive director of the Port of Wilmington, said the deepening would justify the construction of a container terminal with a capacity of 750,000-800,000 containers a year, a development that would likely double the 4,200 direct and indirect jobs that are now supported by the port.
Wilmington can already compete with other East Coast ports by having good road and rail links to markets containing 200 million people, and by operating in a business-friendly state, Keefer said.
By attracting bigger ships, the port will be able to expand its trade from bananas – where it’s already the biggest port in North America – and automobiles, to general cargo such as textiles, electronics and auto parts.
Keefer said he was optimistic that funding would be found to complete the project, and urged policymakers to ensure that the money is available when it’s needed. “We can’t take our eye off the ball,” he said.
