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Deepwater Port Wars
As the ocean freight industry continues its search for ways to increase its efficiency, the squeeze is on northeast ports to offer expanded deepwater facilities. In May 1998 two of the leading companies in the field, Maersk Inc. and Sea-Land Services, Inc., issued a set of minimum standards to become a designated "megaport" for them, and invited seven ports in the area to present proposals stating how they would achieve them.
One of the ports competing was the former naval air station at Quonset Point on Rhode Island's Narragansett Bay. As reported in the August 1998 issue of Atlantic CoastWatch, environmental groups including Save the Bay and the Conservation Law Foundation reacted sharply to the state's hasty entry into the fray. What resulted was a "stakeholder process" in which all interest groups were invited to participate in a series of discussions about the environmental consequences of a Narragansett Bay megaport, and alternative scenarios for economic development.
This process was said to be evolving smoothly when, earlier this month, the companies announced that Quonset Point, along with Norfolk, had been dropped from the competition. Among the reasons stated were "environmental concerns." Maersk's public relations manager Tom Boyd declined to say whether these were the companies' own concerns about what would happen to the environment in narrow and congested Narragansett Bay if the megaport were constructed, or whether the companies simply feared harassment from environmental groups in the area.
If the heat is off the Bay for the moment, environmentalists are confident that other shipping companies will express interest in dredging and landfilling to improve Quonset's port capabilities. They welcome, therefore, the continuation of the "stakeholder process" that will result in an environmental impact statement in 1999. Ports still in the Maersk/Sealand competition are Baltimore, New York, and Halifax. The companies expect to make a final selection, early next year, of one or more of these entries. URLs: www.savethebay.org, www.clf.org, and www.maerskline.com. |
