Posted on July 24, 2024
Darren Fisher’s giving a kind of crash course on dredging. In the Port of Baltimore, it means lifting sediment from the bottom of the Patapsco River and putting it on a barge.
“Then they bring the barge over to us, and they pump that material in,” said Fisher. “It’s kind of like the consistency of a Slurpee from the 7-Eleven.”
Fisher’s talking to a vanload of half a dozen educators. They’re being driven around a dredge material containment facility that Fisher manages. It’s one of the spots where all that sediment is stored.
The people who work in this facility include engineers, environmentalists and laborers. There are many jobs at the port, some of which require a college degree, others that don’t. But young people have to know these careers exist in order to apply to do them. This tour is part of an effort in the Port of Baltimore to instruct educators about these jobs. That way, when their students are looking for work, they’ll think of the port.
It’s all totally new to Mike Strazzire, who advises high schoolers in Baltimore County about work.
“I had no idea this place even existed,” he said.
That’s despite growing up close by. Strazzire also served as a Marine and spent a lot of time on Navy vessels. Now, he said he wants to learn about all the jobs at the port so he can tell his students about them.
“Because when you think about it, it’s like its own little civilization, right?” Strazzire said. “You need your plumbers, you need your electricians, you need your everything.”
More than 20,000 people are employed directly at the port of Baltimore, according to the Maryland Port Administration, with an average annual salary of over $82,000.
Strazzire said his students know the port’s here. But not what they can do here.
“As far as what kind of job opportunities are here, I don’t think they have any clue,” said Strazzire.
This is a familiar challenge to Katrina Jones, who works for the Maryland Port Administration. She helped start this program more than a decade ago, to grow the port’s workforce.
“The problem is — you need to teach the teachers, because they can’t translate this. And once they see it, it makes sense to them,” said Jones.
At one of the port’s terminals, Jones pointed out some fancy sports cars that have come off a ship. We catch a glimpse of some brightly colored McLarens, some with doors that open upwards. It feels kind of top secret.
“You definitely cannot take photos here,” said Jones.
One job at the port is fixing up any cars like these that are damaged in transit, said Kipp Snow, director of transportation, distribution, and logistics at the Community College of Baltimore County. He’s one of the leaders of this annual tour.
“It’ll be repaired here, so that as it goes back out, it’s still the new vehicle,” said Snow.
The educators also get a bird’s eye view of the port from a conference room in one of its 37 terminals. They can see containers and cranes, some as high as 165 feet.
They also get some real talk about Baltimore’s location from Frits de Goede, with Ports America Chesapeake, a terminal operator and stevedore here.
“The shipping lines don’t like to come here. The Chesapeake Bay, it’s 10 to 12 hours up the bay,” said de Goede. “It’s a beautiful ride up the bay, but it’s expensive.”
De Goede said it can cost up to $100,000 per day to operate a cargo vessel. So that bay ride costs the shippers real money. But he said the manufacturers of the cargo love that Baltimore’s the farthest inland port on the east coast. That just means it’s a shorter distance to take those McLarens and other cargo to points west.
Meanwhile, Marta Mullin, a special education teacher has something else on her mind: she’s focused on the durability of the 300-year-old port.
“What kind of things are you doing to prepare for either the rise in the waters or for bigger hurricanes?” she asked.
Climate change is something the port is taking into consideration. At one terminal, they’re planning to install floodwalls to deal with giant storms. The fact that the port’s thinking about this gives Mullin confidence.
“That just means growth is going to keep happening for the Baltimore area,” she said. “We know that means our kids are going to be able to find jobs.”
It makes sense to question the security of industrial jobs here. Both a steel plant and car factory have left Baltimore in the last couple decades. But the port can’t be moved. So, logistics will likely remain a major part of Maryland’s future.
