Back to the Future!
LITTLE FALLS, N.Y. - Most people do not believe that Tim Dufel can push 2,000 tons of steel all the way across New York State. Isn’t the old Erie Canal dried up, they ask him, its locks broken, its ditch filled in and forgotten?
The tugboat pushed a barge through a lock in Little Falls, N.Y.
They ask these questions even on days like this one, when Mr. Dufel is standing in an orange life vest, watching brown water flood Lock 16 here and lift his loaded barge like a toy battleship in a bathtub.
“Sixty percent of the people I meet have no idea the Erie Canal is even still functioning,” Mr. Dufel said. He is assistant engineer on the tugboat Margot and an owner of the New York State Marine Highway Transportation Company, one of the largest shippers on the canal.
After decades of decline, commercial shipping has returned to the Erie Canal, though it is a far cry from the canal’s heyday. The number of shipments rose to 42 so far this year during the season the canal is open, from 15 during last year’s season, which lasts from May 1 to Nov. 15.
Once nearly forgotten, the relic of history has shown signs of life as higher fuel prices have made barges an attractive alternative to trucks.
“We anticipated we might have an increase in commercial traffic, but nowhere near what we’re seeing today,” said Carmella R. Mantello, director of the New York State Canal Corporation, a subsidiary of the New York State Thruway Authority that operates the Erie and three other canals.
Along the Erie Canal, business owners who never gave the sleepy waterway much thought are exploring new ways of putting it to use.
“There aren’t too many wagon trails left, but we still have the canal,” said John Callaghan, a mate on the Margot. “Sure it’s history, but it’s still relevant. We’re making money here.”
Completed in 1825, rerouted in parts and rebuilt twice since then, the Erie Canal flows 338 miles across New York State, between Waterford in the east and Tonawanda in the west. It carved out a trail for immigrants who settled the Midwest, and it cemented the position of New York City, which connects with the canal via the Hudson River, as the nation’s richest port. In 1855, at the canal’s height as a thoroughfare for goods and people, 33,241 shipments passed through the lock at Frankfort, 54 miles east of Syracuse, according to Craig Williams, history curator at the New York State Museum in Albany.
Though diminished in the late 1800s by competition from railroads, commercial shipping along the canal grew until the early 1950s, when interstate highways and the new St. Lawrence Seaway lured away most of the cargo and relegated the canal to a scenic backwater piloted by pleasure boats.
The canal still remains the most fuel-efficient way to ship goods between the East Coast and the upper Midwest. One gallon of diesel pulls one ton of cargo 59 miles by truck, 202 miles by train and 514 miles by canal barge, Ms. Mantello said. A single barge can carry 3,000 tons, enough to replace 100 trucks.
As the price of diesel climbed over $4 a gallon this summer - the national average is now about $3.31 a gallon - more shippers rediscovered the Erie Canal. On one trip in mid-October, the Margot motored down the canal at about seven knots, pushing a barge loaded with a giant green crane. The machine was being transported from Huger, S.C., to the Pinney Dock, operated by the Kinder Morgan Company in Ashtabula, Ohio.
“It really just came down to economics,” said Lee Demers, the dock’s manager. The other option was to move the crane through the St. Lawrence Seaway, adding more than 1,000 miles and greater fuel costs to the trip.
A few miles east of Little Falls, the canal sat flat as glass, reflecting the orange and red leaves on either bank. As the barge plunged through, the surface curled into a mirrored wave two feet high before breaking into gray chop.
“I’ve worked the East Coast, the West Coast and the Panama Canal, but up here is some of the most beautiful country you can ever see,” said John Schwind, 62, the captain of the Margot, who first learned to pilot tugs here in the 1970s.
A little further on, the barge pitched to port as it rammed muddy sediment along the bottom. After rains flood the canal’s tributaries, the mud occasionally becomes so deep that the tug’s propellers cannot turn the load, and the barge drifts dangerously close to the bank.
“You have to pay constant attention,” Mr. Schwind said. “You can run into trouble real fast.”
The canal was dug at least 12 feet deep. But decades of diminished shipping revenue left the canal corporation struggling to keep up with maintenance. Last year, the corporation paid $3 million for a new dredger - its old machine dated from the 1950s.
The agency does not have money for advertising, so this year’s growth happened almost entirely by word of mouth. Much of the interest comes from new energy businesses. An old building in Fulton that has been converted into the Northeast Biofuels plant sits on the shore of the Oswego River, which serves as the Oswego Canal and connects to the Erie. The site will also include a carbon dioxide recovery plant, which required moving four large metal tanks there, said Eric Will II, one of the owners of Northeast Biofuels.
Moving the tanks by truck or rail would have required cutting them into pieces and reassembling them at the site, adding tens of thousands of dollars to the cost, Mr. Will said. Instead, the manufacturer delivered the tanks whole by barge.
“It’s a nifty thing to do,” Mr. Will said, “and it can be a very cost-effective.”
Some proponents worry that as oil prices drop, the canal could lose its price advantage, and shipping might again slide into oblivion. Others expected this summer’s spike to continue because it reminded people that the canal exists.
When a company called Auburn Biodiesel decided to convert an old factory in Montezuma into a biodiesel plant, the building’s location beside the canal “was merely an incidental consideration,” said David J. Colegrove, the company’s president. But after watching the number of cargo shipments along the canal grow, Mr. Colegrove said he hoped to bring soybeans in by barge and use the canal to ship finished product to New York City.
“The amount of money you can save is really eye-popping,” he said. “I’m fascinated by the history of the canal, and I’m intrigued by how well it still works.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/03/nyregion/03erie.html