Especially once the
Panama Canal completes its expansion by 2014:
U.S. seaports in the Southeast need deeper harbors, report saysPublished: Saturday, June 23, 2012, 10:00 AMU.S. seaports in the Southeast likely need up to $5 billion to deepen their shipping channels so they can trade with supersized cargo ships expected to arrive soon through an expanded Panama Canal, a federal agency said Thursday in a
report to Congress. Lawmakers asked the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to examine improvement needs among the nation's ports as local governments scramble for federal funds to deepen their harbors to make room for a growing fleet of giant commercial ships. The East Coast only has three ports -- New York, Baltimore, and Norfolk -- with waterways deep enough to accept the fully loaded ships regardless of tides. The Southeast, forecast for the nation's heaviest growth in population and trade, remains too shallow from Virginia to south Florida and across the Gulf to Texas.
The need for expanding port capacity "is likely to be most critical along the U.S. Southeast and Gulf coasts," the report said. That's because the region has no shipping channels that are at least 50 feet deep, the target depth for the giant ships -- mostly from China and other Asian countries -- that will begin using the Panama Canal after a major expansion is completed by the end of 2014.
The Corps said those so-called post-Panamax ships make up only 16 percent of the world's container fleet, but have nearly half that fleet's carrying capacity.
"Those numbers are projected to grow significantly over the next 20 years," Maj. Gen. Michael J. Walsh, the Army Corps' deputy commanding general for civil works, said in statement Thursday.
Savannah, GA, Charleston, SC, and Miami, FL as well as several ports in the Gulf are already undertaking harbor deepening projects, though none have advanced beyond studies to actual dredging. In April, the Corps completed a 14-year study on the Port of Savannah -- the nation's fourth-busiest container port -- which wants $652 million in taxpayer funds to deepen more than 30 miles of river. Florida port officials hope to have a $150 million deepening of Miami's port finished by 2014.
