Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet Canal
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The Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet Canal (also known as MRGO, MR-GO or "Mr. Go") is a 66 mile (106 km) channel that provides a shorter route between the Gulf of Mexico and New Orleans' inner harbor.
It is intended to be useful both as a shorter route than the twists of the Mississippi River and for deep-draft vessels that cannot fit through canal locks of the Industrial Canal. The canal extends northwest from deep water in the Gulf of Mexico to the Inner Harbor Navigation Canal at the Port of New Orleans. Authorization was provided by the Congress of the United States in the River and Harbor Act of 1956.[1] Construction was completed in 1965.
Because of erosion, it was as much as three times as wide as originally constructed by 1989. When MR-GO was built, the channel was 650 feet wide at the surface, the average width is now 1,500 feet.
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[edit] MR-GO's disappointing performance and possible causes
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According to a congressional hearing statement by Scott Faber of the Environmental Defense Fund, "Traffic on the MRGO has fallen by more than 50 percent since 1986. Today, less than one oceangoing vessel per day, on average, uses this man-made short cut, which costs approximately $13 million annually to maintain. Like many waterways constructed by the Corps, the MRGO has failed to attract as much traffic as the Corps predicted when the project was constructed."[2] Prior to Hurricane Katrina, environmentalists and others, including voters in St. Bernard Parish whom the canal was intended to help, called for its closure. [3]
In 1997, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian organization dedicated to "the principles of free enterprise and limited government" attacked it on economic grounds:
- The promised economic development along the 76 mile channel in St. Bernard Parish has yet to materialize. What the MRGO has delivered is an $8-plus million yearly maintenance plan for commercial and recreational waterborne traffic. The nearly $1 billion price tag for the less than two large container ships a day that use the channel is baffling, especially considering that the channel only shaved 37 miles off the original route. Worse, the MRGO has created numerous environmental problems. The rate of bank erosion is estimated at 15 feet per year.[4]
Criticism intensified following the hurricane, when engineers implicated MR-GO in the failure of levees and flood-walls protecting New Orleans.
A proposal, see below, has already been discussed where gates would be added to solve both the storm surge that hurricanes produces while allowing ships to use the short cut.
[edit] Role in Hurricane Katrina disaster
Levees along MR-GO were breached in approximately 20 places along its length, directly flooding most of Saint Bernard Parish and New Orleans East. Storm surge from MR-GO is also a leading suspect in the three breaches of the Industrial Canal.
Three months before Katrina, Hassan Mashriqui, a storm surge expert at Louisiana State University's Hurricane Center, called MR-GO a "critical and fundamental flaw" in the Corps' hurricane defenses, a "Trojan Horse" that could amplify storm surges 20 to 40 percent. Following the storm, an engineering investigation and computer modelling showed that the outlet intensified the initial surge by 20 percent, raised the height of the wall of water about three feet, and increased the velocity of the surge from 3 feet per second to 8 feet per second in the funnel. Mashriqui believes this contributed to the scouring that undermined the levees and floodwalls along the outlet and Industrial Canal. "Without MRGO, the flooding would have been much less," he said. "The levees might have overtopped, but they wouldn't have been washed away." The Army Corps of Engineers disputes this causality and maintains Katrina would have overwhelmed the levees with or without the contributing effect of MR-GO.[5]
The shoaling of the MR-GO has caused it to be unpassable for deep-draft vessels. Officials of St. Bernard Parish oppose its reopening. Others have called for re-opening it but equipping it with protective floodgates, or accelerating construction of the Inner Harbor Navigational Canal lock project, which when completed would allow MR-GO to be closed without affecting commercial traffic.[6]
[edit] Proposals for adding gates
Similar to Rotterdam, it has been suggested by some that gates be added to MR-GO to stop storm surge.
Others, including St. Bernard Parish itself, insist that only total closure can restore the wetlands destroyed by the MRGO. The plan proposed by the State of Louisiana also calls for the complete closure of the MRGO.
Picture of Proposed Gates at MR-GO WWL Editorial Bush seeks $1.46 billion in new storm protection
[edit] MR-GO and the Port of New Orleans
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Measuring ship traffic though the channel only tells a tiny part of the complete economic story of MR-GO. The Port of New Orleans as well as New Orleans itself has not been a great place to do business. Shipping companies like to ship to places that have a large populations or even growing populations as it saves costs in shipping directly to the end consumer. However, New Orleans population, as well as Louisiana's, has been decreasing ever since the oil bust. Addtionally, New Orleans and Louisiana with its backroom politics and numerous "brother-in-law" deals has been one of the worst places to do business in America. In reaction to this, businesses have moved away from New Orleans and Louisiana. Ship traffic in other cities has surpassed New Orleans. Cities like Houston have easily surpassed New Orleans in total containers shipped. For example, in 2003, New Orleans had 255,374 shipping containers and Houston had 1,024,755 shipping containers pass through. U.S. Waterborne Container Traffic by Port/Waterway in 2003
After the Hurricane Katrina disaster, it was widely reported that the Port of New Orleans was around 4th largest in the U.S. However, this was measured using "tonnage" as opposed to "containers". A significant portion of the ship traffic going though the Port of New Orleans was coal, grain, and oil; a heavy type of shipment as compared to TV's, computers, etc.
The depth of MR-GO is also not good for large ocean going container ships that can carry on average, 5000 containers. Ships now are being built to hold 7000 containers and there are some now being build to handle 13,000 containers. Containerization
Because of the increasing size of ships so that shipping companies can lower the costs to transport goods, MR-GO's channel depth can easily limit ship traffic.
Port fees and assisted robotic container unloading cranes also affect whether a shipping company chooses the Port of New Orleans as its off loading destination. Unions, in order to protect their jobs, typically protest the use of such equipment to unload and load ships because it would be faster and cheaper than older methods. This delay in unloading and loading a ship causes shipping companies to search elsewhere for a better facility to unload and load their shipping containers. Ports such as Long Beach, California have around 50 robotic assisted cranes to quickly unload ships where as ports such a New Orleans only have 4. Accordingly, ships can sit for days waiting in line to be unloaded thus increasing costs and ultimately make the end customer wait, this is especially true with most ships carrying thousands of containers.
U.S. Seaports: At the Crossroads of the Global Economy
Additionally, because the winding nature of the Mississippi river (e.g. hair pin turns) and the many sand bars and hidden currents, the costs of pilots navigating the Mississippi river are some of the highest in America which also increases shipping costs though the Port of New Orleans.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Inner Harbor Navigation Canal Evaluation Report, March 1997. Corps of Engineers, New Orleans District. Retrieved on April 2, 2006.
- ^ Faber, Scott (2005), U.S. Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works, Hearing Statements, Date: 11/09/2005[1]
- ^ Southeastern Louisiana University, The SLU Poll: Attitudes Among St. Bernard Parish Voters About The Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, Date: 5/26/2004[2]
- ^ Barrett, David (1997), "Washington Waterworld" Competitive Enterprise Institute, May 1, 1997[3]
- ^ "Investigators Link Levee Failures to Design Flaws; Three Teams of Engineers Find Weakened Soil, Navigation Canal Contributed to La. Collapses." The Washington Post, October 24, 2005[4]
- ^ "Katrina may mean MR-GO has to go," New Orleans Times-Picayune, October 24, 2005[5]
[edit] External links
- Excerpt from The Control of Nature by John McPhee
- "Canal May Have Worsened City's Flooding", Washington Post, Wednesday, September 14, 2005
- "MR-GO goes from hero to villain", New Orleans Times-Picayune, Sunday, January 8, 2006
- Close MR-GO site advocating closing the waterway
- U.S. Waterborne Container Traffic by Port/Waterway in 2003
- MRGO Must Go - A coalition of Groups dedicated to closing the MRGO
