Originally Posted by Lucifer

...Wil's comment about the 'maple syrup and zinc' trade not being affected by this action is probably the most asinine comment I've ever read in TFP. Did you ever wonder where the road salt for Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, Green Bay, Toledo, Superior, Duluth, Cleveland, Erie and all the little places in between (like Muskegon, home of Iggy Pop) comes from? It comes from Goderich, Ontario, a tiny little town with a very large salt mine. And it comes in all year to American cities on Canadian ships. An average bulk laker can carry 25,000 metric tonnes of cargo, not just coal, but salt, gravel, iron ore, stone, cement and other bulk commodities. In relation, the average dump truck can carry about 20 metric tonnes. So each laker is carrying the equivalent of about 1000 dump trucks. Think about that for a minute! That's 1000 more dump trucks on your highways for every laker that stops running. The great lakes trade is dying already. Each year there are fewer and fewer ships carrying cargo. We can't get crew and officers to work on them. The trucker's lobby in Ottawa and Washington is more powerful than the shipper's lobby. Already, some of our contracts have dried up and gone to the truckers, who can carry year round. Nanticoke generating station (and others like Lambton, Recors, Marysville) burns 5000 tonnes a day (!!) in the summer trying to keep up to the energy demand. When we made the dock finally and could start to unload, they were so desperate for the coal, we fed the burners directly from the dock. I agree the burning of coal is a bad thing (that's why I consistently support governments who promise to stop coal fired generating stations), but I also know that there is nothing in place to replace it yet. Windfarms are springing up all over the Great Lakes from Duluth to Sault Ste Marie to Tobermory, but there aren't enough of them yet. There is an overseas shipping company, the Wagenborg line, that has the contract to bring in the windmills. It would have been nice if an American or Canadian company had that contract instead.