America’s Ports: A New Awakening [?]
Washington comes to grips with the reality that the domestic intermodal equation includes four modes. One of them is by water. It’s about time.
One of the great things about spending five years in retirement (I mean, aside from being blissfully idle while you toiled) is that, when you do come back to work, you enjoy a truly fresh perspective in all aspects of your job. Not only does this provide new energy, more importantly, a half decade of change is much easier to discern. Nowhere is this more apparent than the state of American ports today.
Over the course of a more than 40-year career on the waterfront and at sea, including 22 years as a maritime journalist, the one reality that has been always readily apparent – at least, to me – is that the benign neglect of the nation’s ports and infrastructure is something we can all agree upon: it has been a bipartisan effort. It didn’t matter who was in charge inside the beltway. The ports, rivers, harbors and related infrastructure always received second billing when it came to attention, funding and situational awareness. Without any of these critical things, we’d be doomed. In just three weeks back on the job, it is now apparent that we are entering a new phase in our view of what defines a successful intermodal solution.
All that said, and in just the past ten days alone, the flurry of money being spent on (or pledged to) the collective national waterfront is a dizzying thing to behold; one news release after another heralding 31 port improvement projects in 15 states, with a total expenditure of a whopping $580 million. It would not be an understatement to say that as the Reuters feed poured in, I didn’t know where to even start.
If you are vested in the domestic maritime industry, this is, on its face, nothing but good news. In chunks of cash up to $50 million per project, the outgoing administration last week outlined project after project, all designed to improve waterfront infrastructure and intermodal connections. Only the timing of the announcement(s), at least from my seat, is curious.
It Wasn’t always Like This
You don’t have to go back very long to understand just how far we have come. Just two decades ago, for example, you could read the entire transcript of a very boring U.S. Department of Transportation briefing, in which the words “boat, ship, port, river, or harbor” were nowhere to be found. The domestic intermodal equation, back then, was comprised of highways, airports, and a concerted, less-than-successful effort to somehow increase the average speed of a freight train to more than eight miles per hour in a busy Midwest freight hub. Where maritime MIGHT be addressed, it typically involved dredging discussions, but rarely the need to connect the waterfront to the greater intermodal supply chain and the infrastructure that might better facilitate that effort.
Also, not too long ago, we had a maritime administrator who opined that the high cost of doing business on American ships was a function of the cost of a $120 TWIC card. Make no mistake, the benign neglect of the domestic waterfront was still the rule, rather than the exception.
Before the Infrastructure, there was Port Security
A (minor) resurgence for the ports first emerged in the choppy wake of the 9/11 attacks. It was here that the realization that a well-placed and ill-timed nefarious black swan event could cripple the nation’s economy. And while I am referring to terror-related acts, we only need to look as far as the recent allision in Baltimore harbor to understand the fragility of the nation’s port systems. Or, for example, the tacit understanding that a mere 1,000 workers are confident in their ability to bring that waterfront to its knees in a New York minute, unless someone agrees to augment their already enviable compensation and benefits package.
As the nexus of port security awareness on the part of our elected officials came to be, funding for all-important port security was appropriated. Fences, cameras, underwater sonar – you name it, you could get money to build it. An entire industry grew up around maritime and port security. That’s a good thing. And, a lot of good came out of it. We see the fruits of those efforts today, in all of our ports. It might have been Coast Guard Commandant ADM Jim Loy who coined the now common, and enormously impactful term, “Maritime Domain Awareness.” If so, many took that effort to heart.
I’m reminded of the mid-1980’s, when I was shipping out in the Jones Act coastal trades on a miserable, dirty and 40-year-old chemical tanker. We made frequent stops in Port Everglades, Florida. Back then, I would get off watch at 1600 hours on a steamy hot August afternoon, strap on my running shoes, zip down the gangway, across the drawbridge and down the beach for an hour of sweaty exercise. Some shipmates might even amble a little more slowly down the dock, walk two blocks to the nearest well-airconditioned bar and have a few cold ones. I never did that, of course. But people talk; you hear things.
A little more recently, I had reason to visit the port for the purposes of researching a story that I was writing. Long since gone from an everyday presence on the docks, I had let my TWIC card expire, and after being buzzed in at the main gate, I filled out a form and waited patiently for about fifteen minutes for the very competent Port Everglades security team to perform a thorough background investigation. How times have changed. I’m pretty sure business is way down at the bar down the street, but that homeland security grant was, to my mind, money well spent.
And, at the risk of veering off point here, I myself am not convinced that the marine casualties that have happened in Baltimore or in the Suez Canal constitute simple equipment failures or mariner errors. And, I’ll need to see a lot more in the way of analysis and transparency before that happens. The emerging cyber threat is only now beginning to rear its ugly head. The difference between a conspiracy theory and the truth in 2024? About six months.
The Great Awakening: the Rip Van Winkle moment
As I get my sea legs back under me at MarineNews magazine, the seismic change in attitude in what the collective domestic waterfront – including the critical inland rivers and Great Lakes – means to this nation island, is for me, a game changer. Sure, just five years ago, ports like Charleston and Norfolk (the port of Virginia) were already touting their inland, intermodal connections to well-placed foreign trade zones that not only removed thousands of trucks from the highways, but also scrubbed the air of commensurate amounts of NOx, SOx and particulate matter from the air that we breathe. Likewise, the similarly breathtaking amounts of federal money now being thrown at the waterfront should help to continue that important journey; on our three sea coasts, the inland rivers and on the Great Lakes.
What’s next? Looking ahead
For those who might think that the federal government is – to use a bad metaphor here – “spending like a drunken sailor on the waterfront,” it is also fair to note that these same people (our elected officials) think nothing about dropping a few billion here or there on a civil war in Ukraine that arguably has nothing to do with us. Or, pledging $4 billion to help poor countries and another $550 million to save the Rain Forests.
The funding and attention here at home – especially on the collective waterfront – is long overdue. If used wisely, it will produce dividends tenfold in excess of the original taxpayer spend.
Finally, I repeat that I find the announcements surrounding all of the previous paragraph’s spending, and that planned on the waterfront, to be timed curiously indeed. Beyond this, I have no idea what the incoming administration has in mind for port policy. Remember, the benign neglect of the waterfront has always been a bipartisan effort. So, when it comes time to pick out a new Maritime Administrator, the length of time it takes to getting around to appointing one should be a key indicator of what we can expect. Historically, that effort has been a low priority task. That’s a benchmark that you should watch.
If the inattention to the nation’s port systems and their tenuous intermodal connection to the supply chain has truly come to an end, then that’s a good thing. Never look a gift horse in the mouth.
Joseph Keefe is the Editor of MarineNews magazine, and a 1980 graduate of the Massachusetts Maritime Academy. A licensed mariner, his career has spanned more than 40 years in the maritime, shipping and energy sectors. His work has been featured in more than 15 industry periodicals. Today, he contributes to all of the New Wave Media tiles, as needed.