Editorial – What Can the U.S. Learn from Canadian Ports and Their Infrastructure Projects?

We have a lot of great coverage from the Dredging Sum­mit & Expo hosted by the Western Dredging Association (WEDA) in Vancouver British Columbia. It was a fantastic conference – from the unique location to the overall lay­out and the education program. It was really a unified conference in a way I don’t see around the country and in other industries. We’ve covered the main speakers the awards and the safety and environmental commissions in this issue. Even with about nine pages of coverage we didn’t include a lot about the in­dividual education sessions and not because there wasn’t anything to write about. There’s so much to learn and write about that it’s dif­ficult to choose what sessions to attend let alone which to include in our coverage. I have many ideas for future articles and you should attend the conference to enjoy the education for yourself.

Through some of the main conference speakers it was very interesting to learn about the world of dredging in Canada and particu­larly the role the Canadian government plays in dredging and the operation of its ports especially as backdrop against the U.S. model which has seen recent criticism and struggles – the brawling over the federal budget the backlogged waterways projects the sometime sporadic funding stream for projects that re­quires annual authorization for appropria­tions. It should also be noted that big strides have been made in Washington for waterways infrastructure with a focus on public private partnerships the new project authorization process via the Water Resources Reform and Development Act (WRRDA) of 2014 and even a focus on infrastructure needs from the new administration but maybe there’s some­thing to be learned from how they do things in Canada?

In the short time that we heard about Canadian infrastructure and dredging at the WEDA conference from Jeff Scott CEO of Fraser Surrey Docks and Cliff Stewart vice president of infrastructure at the Port of Van­couver it struck me how straightforward the planning funding and execution seemed.

That’s not to say that our neighbors to the north have it all figured out as Scott pointed out many of the challenges they see with re­gard to projects and new infrastructure and dredging are not so different from our chal­lenges but perhaps there is something to be learned from their simple focus and singular authority. The Canadian model operates with a long-term vision and forethought that our infrastructure programs seem to lack.

In 1998 the Canada Marine Act was passed to modernize Canada’s most important ports establishing federal port authorities at 19 ports. One hundred and fifty smaller ports were put under the responsibility of provinces and municipalities. Thirty-four remote ports remain under the direct supervision of Trans­port Canada.

At the WEDA lunch session Cliff Stew­art from the Port of Vancouver talked a lot about the mission of Canada’s federal port authorities. First and foremost they exist to facilitate Canada’s trade but also to protect the environment and local communities. They must also be commercially viable. The Canadian federal port authorities receive no federal funds. They operate by servicing their paying users. Stewart said technically the port authority is an independent corporation owned by the federal Transport Minister and governed by a diverse group of board of direc­tors from all levels of government industry partners and local interests.

And the port funds all its own infrastruc­ture needs. The Port of Vancouver contracts with a private operator (Fraser Surrey Docks) to run its dredging program in the Fraser Riv­er. To support its growth and capacity needs the Port of Vancouver is ten years into the Terminal 2 project at Roberts Bank to create more deepwater space and port capacity.

In his talk Stewart laid out the great need for accommodating significant increases in the port’s capacity over the next decade. Stewart has been working on this program since 2010 and he quoted the project opponent’s who are still saying we don’t need it right now. “But we need it in a decade and it’s already taken 10 years to get this far” Stewart said.

Some 35000 hours of field studies have been done and 77 different scientists have worked on this project. Because it’s in an area with earthquakes Stewart talked about some of the geotechnical studies that were done to assure that if the big earthquake did come the entire project wouldn’t slip off into the abyss. The project is still about 10 years from opera­tion and the port doesn’t have a need for that capacity now. But it will in a decade.

Does Canada have all the answers for public infrastructure? Probably not but it is interesting in comparison especially in light of the divide in Washington these days over spending and the focus on infrastructure. So U.S. port authorities are not federal entities. They are generally economically viable and support a significant amount of port infra­structure funding. They pay a user fee federal tax to the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund (HMTF). But HMTF has not been used for its intended purpose for some time so the fed­eral government often has trouble supporting its share of the projects through the annual budget process. The annual process also can impede long-term projects which require an­nual appropriation authorizations. It may be hard to advocate for federalizing our port sys­tem. However without the full support of the HMTF ports are paying for their share and then some. Perhaps we would still have fund­ing and project planning bottlenecks with federal port authorities but the idea of self-sufficiency sounds so great.

However Canada faces many of the same problems seen in the U.S. As I mentioned before Jeff Scott from Fraser Surrey Docks highlighted many of the same problems that we see here today in the U.S. “As the world and port communities change and evolve ap­provals are getting more difficult the envi­ronmental standards have increased capital is harder to justify timelines are getting shorter community takeover and pressure on its ports is increasing” Scott said.

Credit should also be given to efforts made in recent years to streamline the project and permit process in the U.S. The 3x3x3 rule has challenged the Corps to cut project timelines overall costs and administration oversight. We could do better with the funding we have but this country also struggles to see past the line item sheet and the annual budget process.

We probably don’t want all our projects to span two decades but in some cases that might be necessary to prepare for what’s need­ed. Instead many of our ports are now wad­ing through the long project process long after the need for more capacity was there. I was very interested to learn how they did things in Canada with regard to infrastructure and dredging and it was fascinating to compare it to the U.S. model in the hopes that we might learn something.