Red Flows the St. Lawrence

Few international projects have been debated with such fervor or greeted with such optimism as the St. Lawrence Seaway. When it opened in 1959, its proponents prophesied that it would create "America's fourth seacoast," spread prosperity along its banks, and prove a boon to commercial shippers in the U.S. and Canada, which shared the $470 million cost of building it. After five years of operation, the Seaway has not come near to fulfilling that promise. Last week in Detroit, a Senate commerce subcommittee held hearings to discuss the Seaway's troubles and what can be done about them. Last year's revenues of $15.2 million fell $11 million short of meeting expenses; the Seaway now owes $12 million in overdue interest payments to the U.S. and $65 million to Canada.

The system stretches 1,300 miles from Montreal to Duluth and links 22 Great Lake ports with the Atlantic, but it has failed to attract the expected commercial traffic. The Seaway's troubles stem from a combination of engineering shortcomings and poor financial planning. For one thing, the Seaway is too shallow to accommodate large freighters. Most of its ports are ill-equipped to load and unload ships, and passage through the 15 sets of locks is tedious and slow; the average ship takes ten days to travel from Chicago to Montreal. Because the waterways freeze over for four months each winter, shippers cannot rely on year-round use. Finally, tolls make shipping by water almost as expensive as land transportation. The project's backers are now debating whether to raise tolls even further to increase revenues or to cut them to attract more traffic. Commissions in both the U.S. and Canada have been ordered to report to their governments by July with definite plans for plugging the financial leaks in the Seaway.

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