U.S. ports racing to get ready for bigger ships

SAVANNAH, Ga. -- It's just before noon on a recent weekday, and the nation's fastest-growing container shipping port is bustling with activity.

Massive, 10-story-high cranes, each shaped like an upside down "U," lift tractor-trailer-size containers onto and off cargo ships at dockside. A station checking for radioactivity in containers leaving the port clicks right along, while a non-stop stream of trucks enters and leaves the 1,200-acre facility.

The freight moving through here touches the lives of people in 15 states, some 44% of the nation's population.

Even more critically, as the USA seeks to double exports in the next five years, this is one of the nation's few major ports with a higher percentage of exports than imports.

Those exports — such as kaolin clay from Sandersville, Ga.; poultry from around the region; grain from the Midwest; automobiles from Southeast plants, and chemicals from around the nation — accounted for nearly one-eighth of the USA's containerized exports in 2010.

Now, this port — like others along the U.S. Atlantic Coast — is at a critical crossroads. Their fate is tied to the first major expansion of the Panama Canal in its nearly 100-year history. When that project is completed in 2014, the canal's larger locks will be able to accommodate cargo ships with three times the current capacity. Those larger vessels, known as "post-Panamax" ships, will be calling at ports here and elsewhere on the East Coast.

The problem: The port in Norfolk, Va., is the only one on the East Coast that has a channel deep enough to accommodate the larger vessels.

As a result, other ports along the Atlantic Ocean are scrambling to dredge deeper channels so they can handle the bigger ships. "Other countries throughout the world are looking at what is necessary in terms of their own (shipping) infrastructure to be competitive in world trade," says Kurt Nagle, president and CEO of the American Association of Port Authorities. "It's something the U.S. really needs to be doing. The general concern is the U.S. is behind the curve and really at the stage of needing to play catch-up."

Officials say the Panama Canal expansion will mean some ships that previously had to deliver their freight to the generally deeper ports of the West Coast, where goods are moved mainly by rail across the nation, will be able to deliver goods more efficiently via all-water routes directly to East Coast ports. Officials such as Page Siplon, executive director of Georgia's Center of Innovation for Logistics, say there could be a 25% to 30% shift in freight shipping.

A long-sought Port of Savannah channel-deepening project would result in 15% to 20% cheaper shipping costs, says Chris Cummiskey, Georgia's commissioner of economic development.

Consumers across the Southeast could see a direct impact from the project.

"Exporters will have lower costs of getting their goods to the world," says Billy Birdwell, a spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers, which will deepen Savannah's port channel once it's approved. "Therefore, they are saving money, able to hire more people, able to do more work. Goods coming in will cost less to ship in, which will ultimately be passed on to consumers."

Ambitions to expand