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Saginaw River dredging on track; farmers to benefit
Dredging in the Saginaw River will begin this summer after a compromise was reached between the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ).
The result, according to supporters of the dredging project, will mean lower costs for farm inputs such as potash and other fertilizers, as well as road salt, aggregates (gravel), and cement.
"I think it's reasonable to say that easily 25 percent of the fertilizers farmers in the Saginaw Valley and the Thumb use comes in through the river," said Jim Byrum, president of the Michigan Agri-Business Association. "And when we can bring full vessels in, I'm not going to say prices will go down, necessarily, but they will not increase as fast."
While some environmentalists have long framed the dredging with environmental gloom and doom - and have opposed placement of the dredged silt and sand into a "dredge material disposal facility (DMDF)" built specifically for it - the alternative carries a greater environmental cost, according to people who depend on ships to bring agricultural supplies.
"The environmentalists have poised this as something bad, but that's illogical," said Bill Webber, owner of Sargent Dock in Zilwaukee who also represents the Saginaw River Alliance, a non-profit organization of 38 companies that employ more than 330 people. "The site (where the silt will be deposited) is the safest site ever built. The project will clean out the river, so it's good not only for shipping, but also for the environment," he said.
The most recent issue of contention over the project involved the nearly-complete DMDF built by the Army Corps of Engineers, which the DEQ contended was not safe without a slurry wall. Environmentalists attacked the Corps, citing problems at New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina as an excuse to disparage the Corps' position, and cried politics when Lt. Gov. John Cherry ultimately helped negotiate the solution.
That solution means dredging will begin sometime this summer, after completion of the DMDF, with depth and width requirements that allow fully-loaded ships to dock and unload by 2009. After that, Webber said, only minor, annual dredging for maintenance will be required. The DMDF is designed to hold 20 years of dredge material from the Saginaw River.
The compromise was arranged after Cherry stepped into the debate, which came after media reports that the Army Corps of Engineers would pull out of the long-anticipated project, noting that other dredging requests were waiting. And in the end, said Bob McCann, spokesman for the DEQ, there just wasn't support from the Corps to justify adding the slurry wall to the project.
"We still have our own concerns that the containment structure could leak, allowing liquid to soak into the ground or surface waters," he said. "But with the dock owners pledging to pay for a number of monitoring wells, it's a step forward."
While McCann insisted that the DEQ never was opposed to the dredging, it was pleased to see that the dock owners volunteered to pay for the monitoring wells once it was clear that the slurry wall would not be part of the DMDF.
"In the past, we had a commitment for a slurry wall, but personnel changes brought new leadership at the Army Corps in Detroit," he said. "The new leadership didn't feel the same way. We agreed all along that the dredging needed to happen, but we wanted the wall as an environmental protection. Dow was looking to fund that, but those discussions haven't held up. So at the end of the day, the slurry wall will not happen, but the monitoring wells are a step in the right direction."
The science of the DMDF, sans slurry wall, is solid, said Angie Mundell, project manager for operations with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
"We know it's safe, but how to get everyone to believe that is the difficult part," she said. "I don't think it's our job to sell this to the public, but it is part of our job to answer to the public, and we want it to feel safe. Patience may be the only way. We've had studies done that show contamination from the DMDF will not leak, but you can't make people believe you. We don't blame people for feeling nervous about having contaminants in a DMDF near them, but it is safe, and it's our belief that the new shoaling will be cleaner. The Saginaw will be a much cleaner river."
Overlooked by media reports about the controversy, Mundell said, are the economic benefits to the project.
"There are economic benefits and environmental benefits," she said. "It's a win-win."
When the project is done, one big winner will be the farm community in the Saginaw Bay and Thumb regions, Webber said.
"What some folks don't seem to grasp is that the less we carry on ships, the more it costs," he said. "It costs the same to ship in 10,000 tons as it does to ship 20,000 tons."
Without dredging, which was last done in 2006 after a state of emergency was declared, ships cannot navigate the river safely with full loads, and so either arrive half-full or send material from other ports over rail lines or on semi trailers. And when that happens, the environment suffers because of the extra fuel spent to ship products over land. It also adds cost, not only in fuel but in labor, which farmers end up paying for as those costs are passed on.
That all means, Webber said, that costs to farmers are artificially high.
"It's economies of scale gone to hell," he said. "Whether the cargo comes in on ships or not, we still have to have the same employees, and the same work has to be done. The difference is, with less volume, there is a higher cost per ton."
Webber said the cost savings that are certain to occur when fully-loaded ships begin to navigate the dredged area will be passed along to farmers, and they can thank political pressure for finally getting it done.
"The Lieutenant Governor was a tremendous help when he stepped in, and we had bi-partisan support for the project," he said. "Representative Ken Horn and Senator Roger Kahn helped, and Jim Byrum helped out a lot, as did other organizations. We also got support from Joel Sheltrown, Jeff Mayes, and Jim Barcia. It had to be bipartisan, because from the beginning, everybody seemed to be thinking of a reason this couldn't be done instead of how to make it happen. In the end, all we wanted was to have the entire project ruled on with science and law instead of emotion. I feel in my heart that we're doing something tremendous here, and we're on the verge of having clean water. A lot of the hassle over it wasn't necessary, because it only resulted in hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal costs."
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