Was it a mistake to build the Seaway?

This weekend, author and journalist Jeff Alexander is the keynote speaker at Save The River’s Winter Weekend at the Clayton Opera House. Alexander wrote a pretty comprehensive book about the history of invasive species in the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River called Pandora’s Locks. Invasive species have cost the region billions of dollars. An interview I did with him aired a couple days ago. Listen to it here.

I didn’t have broadcast time to include a really interesting part of the interview, where Alexander poses the question above. Was it a mistake to build the Seaway?

Canada and most Midwestern ports would definitely answer no. So would most people in St. Lawrence County, where the Seaway employs a lot of people to work at the locks and operations center in Massena.

Alexander says “it was built for all the right reasons and all the best intentions.” No one could have predicted the Seaway was opening a dangerous and unprecedented vector of infection for the Great Lakes eocsystem.

But the Seaway is a huge underachiever, economically speaking. Foreign freighter traffic is just a sliver of overall shipping traffic on the Great Lakes – most ships are “lakers”, not “salties”.

So why not close the Seaway “entrance”, make sure new invasive species don’t enter, and just off-load foreign cargo or foreign-bound cargo at the docks in Montreal?

The National Academy of Sciences tackled this question in 2008, determining the Seaway was worth keeping open, but acknowledging that it is “not vital” to the economic health of North America.

Listen to Jeff Alexander talk about the economic, environmental, and social trade-offs regarding the Seaway. He claims shutting down the Seaway would actually *create* 1,000 jobs in the Great Lakes region, but maybe also busier roads and more pollution:

It’s fascinating to think about all the variables in making a decision about the future of the Seaway: greenhouse gases, invasive species, clogged roads, maritime technology, national and regional identity.

What do you think? Should the Seaway – a waterway that’s intimately intertwined with the history and culture of the North Country – be shut down?