Posted on May 15, 2017
The largest cargo ship ever to visit ports on the U.S. East Coast is so long the Statue of Liberty and Washington Monument could fit end-to-end along its deck and still leave room for Big Ben.
The COSCO Development arrived Thursday at the Port of Savannah in Georgia after cruising past dozens of onlookers — a sight Louisiana ports on the lower end of the Mississippi River hope to one day see as well.
The ship’s East Coast voyage marks a new era for U.S. ports that, despite years spent anticipating the supersized ships, will struggle to accommodate them without major infrastructure improvements.
At the Port of New Orleans, officials are waiting for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to complete a draft study of the feasibility of dredging the ship channel to 50 feet. The study, which should be completed by October, will look at the cost estimates and return on investment for the dredging, said Matt Gresham, port spokesman.
At 1,200 feet bow-to-stern, the COSCO Development is longer than the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford. It can carry 13,000 cargo containers measuring 20 feet long apiece. That’s 30 percent more capacity than the last record-breaking ship that sailed into Savannah last summer.
The big ship, flagged out of Hong Kong and owned by China-based COSCO Shipping Lines, is also the largest to pass through the Panama Canal following a major expansion last year. Its arrival on the East Coast shows shippers aren’t waiting for the seaports scrambling to deepen their harbors so the larger ships can pass fully loaded.
The Port of Virginia, where the ship docked earlier this week, is one of only four East Coast ports with the desired 50 feet of depth at low tide. Savannah’s shipping channel is undergoing a $973 million deepening. The Port of Charleston, South Carolina, where the big ship heads next, starts dredging this fall. Overall, 15 U.S. seaports on the East and Gulf coasts are seeking $4.6 billion after being authorized by Congress to make room for bigger ships.
The cost of dredging 22 miles of the Mississippi River ship channel to 50 feet is estimated at $100 million, Gresham said. That would widen the channel past the Port of New Orleans to the edge of the Port of South Louisiana in LaPlace.
“It looks very positive,” Gresham said. If the corps approves the dredging, the next step would be to secure money for the project. While federal funds would cover 75 percent of the cost, the local match would be 25 percent, he said. New Orleans port officials would also look at acquiring another $100 million to cover expansions at the facility to accommodate the extra cargo that would come in from the larger ships.
“Maybe it’s a warning shot that these U.S. ports need to get these improvements finished,” Jim Walker, navigation policy director for the American Association of Port Authorities, said of the COSCO ship’s arrival. “If you’re having to light-load ships for this, it costs more,” he said.
Source: The New Orleans Advocate
