St. Lawrence Seaway

From Great Lakes Wiki

Facts and Figures

The canal system allows ocean-going vessels to pass through the Atlantic Ocean and go into the Great Lakes. It goes from Montreal to Lake Erie, including the Welland Canal and the Great Lakes Waterway. The seaway follows the Saint Lawrence River, which it is named after, from the Atlantic Ocean to Lake Ontario.

Distance: 295 km (183 mi)

Height: 68 m (224 ft)

Minimum Depth of 4.3 m (14 ft)

Locks: 7

Toll Charge: In Canada

Closed: by ice from mid-December to early April

Operated by: the St. Lawrence Seaway Authority (Canada) and the St. Lawrence Seaway Development Corp. (U.S.)

Cargo Upstream: 18,927,000 metric tons of freight; consists mainly of iron ore.

Cargo Downstream: 26, 234,000 metric tons of freight; crops wheat, maize, barley, and soybeans.

The seaway is divided into five sections; the Lachine section which connects Montreal and W Lake Saint-Louis, the Soulanges section which is between W Lake St-Louis and E Lake Saint Francis, the 80-km (50-mi) International Rapids section which includes the Wiley-Dondero Ship Channel, and the Thousand Islands section, which has dredged channels and no locks. The first three sections are all entirely in Canada, and the last two contain parts in Northern New York.

Ballast Water Management

Ballast water regulations for the St. Lawrence Seaway remain the most detailed and rigorous of any body of water in the world. This is because ballast water is the main carrier of the invasive species or acquatic nuisance species that tend to enter the Great Lakes. This concern has caused the world, not only the US and Canada, to strive for a solution.

The Great Lakes St. Lawrence Seaway System has been in the forefront of this issue for many years. In the United States, the U.S. Coast Guard is the primary agency for the creation and the enforcement of ballast water management regulations as required by Congress pursuant to the Non-indigenous Aquatic Nuisance Prevention and Control Act of 1990, as amended by the National Invasive Species Act (NISA) of 1996 (P.L. 104-332). If a vessel is bound for the U.S, the Coast Guard regulations require it to exchange its ballast at sea. The vessels may be required to keep the ballast on board, pump it ashore, treat it, or return it to sea. The SLSDC and the U.S. Coast Guard must show a craftâ€™s successful ballast water exchange through its boarding program, as a regulation by the Enhanced Seaway Inspection (ESI) program for foreign flagged vessels. This boarding program includes taking a measurement of the salinity of on board ballast. If a vessel shows a ballast with a salinity of 30 ppt (parts per thousand) or more, it is considered evidence that the tanks have indeed been exchanged which will provide a harsh living environment, killing off any remaining organisms. If No Open Ballasts On Board (NOBOBs) vessels cannot conduct a mid-ocean ballast water exchange, they are then encouraged to perform saltwater flushing of their empty ballast tanks.

Mandatory ballast water management regulations were issued by Transport Canada, and implementation of the ballast water performance discharge standard was approved by the International Maritime Organization (IMO). Vessels transiting the Seaway are always required to comply with two other standards of ballast water management. These regulations state that every vessel entering the Seaway, while operating anywhere within the Great Lakes and the Seaway, must agree to comply with the â€œCode of Best Practices for Ballast Water Managementâ€ of the Shipping Federation of Canada.

Areas of Concern

The disease linked with several recent fish die-offs is Viral Hemorrhagic Septicemia. This disease attacks trout and other cold-water fish species. VHS has surprised experts by impacting warm or cool water species only. It has had no Since it first showed up in the Great Lakes a couple of years ago it has surprised the experts by impacting warm- or cool-water species only, and to date has had no apparent impact on the fish which thrive in Lake Ontario.

The infestation of zebra mussels has been another problem for the aquatic life of the Seaway. Zebra mussels are an exotic freshwater shellfish native to Asia. The zebra mussels (Dreissena polymorpha) have put the ecological balance of the Great Lakes at risk. They are believed to have been brought into the Great Lakes system in the 1986 by intercontinental freighters along the St. Lawrence Seaway. Nowadays they number in the billions and are filtering microscopic life from the water and changing the ecology of the Great Lakes. They have also been known to sink buoys and stick to water intake pipes, which threatens water supplies for Canada. The pipes become clogged and unusable when the mussels lay their eggs near the pipes of electric generating stations.

The Seaway has also experienced trouble because of the industrial plants along the river using it as a dumping ground. It has been used as a dumping ground for factories, thus increasing pollution in the water, the soil, and the air. Factories on both sides of the St. Lawrence have used it as a dumping ground, polluting the water, soil and air. Not only do these industries have to stop producing this pollution, but the area must also be restored from years of abuse.

When it was built, the Seaway was known as an engineering triumph, but now it is not known as such. The Seaway is facing an economic crisis, and may have to close dependent upon the solution to its problems. As a result, the Seaway fleet has shrunk from 84 to 45 ships, and in June 1996, a bill was designed by the House of Commons, known as the Canada Marine Act, to make the Seaway and Canadaâ€™s marine sector less reliant on government subsidies. The bill passed two years later.