Excerpts from Fortune Magazine:
The Mississippi River, combined with the Panama Canal, is the most efficient shipping route between the Eastern U.S. and Asia. But the river may be challenged to handle increased traffic when the expanded Panama Canal opens in 2016.
The Mississippi will be increasingly important for U.S. competitiveness in the 21st century. Wages (for better or for worse) continue to equalize globally, encouraging “onshoring” of export-oriented manufacturing back to the U.S. Combined with an expanded Panama Canal, the Mississippi will provide a hyper-efficient trade route for goods and materials between the Eastern U.S. and Asia.
The river’s gifts aren’t entirely free—channels are regularly dredged, and the naturally shifting riverbed has been reinforced. But some projects have had unintended consequences. Anti-flooding levees along the lower Mississippi have constrained the regular deposit of vital sand and silt since mass construction began in 1927, resulting in the progressive loss of more than 1,900 square miles of coastal land—a loss that has actually increased flood risk.
Another challenge is the need for a deeper river mouth. The expanded Panama Canal, scheduled for completion in 2016, will allow ships with up to a 60-foot draft to traverse it, but the lower Mississippi stretch carrying ocean vessels to the ports of New Orleans, South Louisiana, and Baton Rouge is currently only 45 feet deep. Deeper dredging would be extremely costly.
“The navigation interests in Louisiana are not very happy,” says Paul Kemp, “And of course from an ecological standpoint, it’s a disaster.”
