Corporations and individuals wishing to contribute to the G.W. Nicholson Scholarship Fund can do so by sending their tax-deductible contribution to: G.W. Nicholson Scholarship Fund, University of Wisconsin-Superior Department of Transportation and Logistics c/o UW-Superior Advancement Office; Belknap and Caitlin, P.O. Box 2000, Superior, WI 54880.

We originally thought that The Seaway Channel would be read by a few hundred hearty Great Lakes maritime industry loyalists in the eight U. S. states and two Canadian provinces that border the Lakes might take the occasional peek at our site and if we kept publishing for a few years our readership might reach a thousand or so. Boy, did you ever prove us wrong!

We can now report that at the end of our first year of operations our little experiment boast tens of thousands of hits from 61 countries on six continents. Our readers span across Canada and the United States to be sure and also reach down to Chile and Argentina at the southern end of the Western Hemisphere. While our overseas readers are concentrated in Europe as one might expect, they also stretch from Turkey to Japan and Vietnam in Asia and from the Suez region of North Africa to the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa. Let’s not leave out our friends in Oceana as our Ozzie and Kiwi readers might object to the oversight.

June 2008, our twelfth month of operations, was by far our most successful in terms of numbers as The Seaway Channel shattered our previous monthly records for total hits, page views and unique visitors. Last month the total number of hits on the site bested the previous record by more than 14.3 percent. June’s total number of page views beat the previous record by more than 15.3 percent. Topping the record month off, June’s total number of unique visitors to The Seaway Channel shattered the previous high water mark by a whopping 56.2 percent. That’s the good news. The bad news is…we don’t know why. We suppose that’s all part of the scientific process of experimentation. For the time being, we will content ourselves with our good fortune as we scratch our heads trying to come up with theories as to why June provoked such a sharp increase in readership.

All we know for sure is that we are grateful to you, our readers and to our advertising partners for making The Seaway Channel a success. We remain committed to do our best to bring you news and thoughtful commentary about the issues, events and people that make the Great Lakes/St. Lawrence Seaway maritime industry work.

So today people all across Canada will celebrate the birth of their nation and on Friday the people of the United States will celebrate the birth of theirs. Flags will be raised and saluted and hopefully Canadian troops in harms way overseas serving in Afghanistan and American troops in Afghanistan and Iraq will be given special thought and prayer by grateful citizens at home.

It’s very easy to get caught up in the day to day irritations and inconveniences of life. The daily annoyances of traffic tie-ups, high fuel prices, silly, spoiled celebrities and windy politicians can all fade into the background noise if we take a few moments this week to think about how grateful we are to live in the free society that has been created by the vision of our nations’ founders and the courage and sacrifice of those who have fought to defend our freedoms.

It’s important to celebrate the contributions that these nations have made and are making to cause of human freedom. The people of both nations have much for which to be thankful and much of which to be proud.

His sharp business acumen and vast experience in the cargo handling industry made him a much sought-after contributor to a number of efforts to improve and modernize Seaway commerce. His no-nonsense honesty gave this soft-spoken man a strong and clear voice that both his industry colleagues and Washington policy makers strained to hear.

But it was his kind spirit and gentle demeanor that made him even more sought-after as a friend and companion by so many. His legendary generosity with his time and of his spirit made him one of the Great Lakes/St. Lawrence Seaway System’s most beloved business leaders. It is not an overstatement to say that he was one of those rare people whose company was universally enjoyed. He would often stay up half the night talking with a friend who needed his counsel and then could be found the next morning at 6:00 a.m. with his ubiquitous cup of coffee and cigarette extending an open invitation to join him for breakfast. He was an abundant source of positive energy and good cheer. His broad smile and his easy and infectious laugh are unforgettable to those who had the good fortune to know him.

It is a little known fact that just a year ago Gary Nicholson served as an important catalyst and advisor during the process that led to the founding of The Seaway Channel. He was deeply involved in a set of discussions during a St. Lawrence Securite trade mission to Antwerp, Belgium that led to the decision to begin The Seaway Channel as an experiment in publishing. It was, in large part, Gary’s wise counsel and encouragement that has helped guide The Seaway Channel through its first year of operation. This publication would be failing to live up to Gary’s high standards for truthfulness if we failed to mention his instrumental role in this publication’s creation and success.

Gary is survived by his wonderful wife Ruth, his daughters Deb, Shari and Janeen, his step-daughter Jordan, his granddaughters, Paige, Amanda and Samantha and his brothers, Michael and Dennis. He is also survived by countless friends and admirers across the United States, Canada and Europe who came to know this exceptional man. Many of his close friends know how much Gary Wayne Nicholson enjoyed American cowboy aphorisms. So it is fitting for us to say, “Happy Trails, old friend, you will be missed.”

Four of the previously closed locks have now been reopened but still eight locks remain closed snarling barge traffic until possibly as late as the Fourth of July weekend. For a typical week in June, grain tonnage through Lock 25 at Winfield, MO is roughly 488,000 tons. Lock 25 might lose as much as 1.5 million tons of through-put during the course of this month’s three-week long closure. Overall barge grain movements through the Mississippi River system were down 47 percent last week compared to the previous four weeks and 54 percent compared to last year at the same time.

The floods devastating effects are not just felt by the transportation sector. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) sent out a reminder this week that it deems floodwaters to be inherently unsanitary and therefore views grains, oilseed, animal feed and feed ingredients that have been in contact with flood waters to be unfit for human consumption or animal feed unless reconditioned. This includes corn and soybeans destined for ethanol or bio-diesel production because the distiller’s by-products tend to be used in animal feed.

With little fanfare, the Port of Milwaukee has established new all-time tonnage records each year since 2004. During that time overall tonnage throughput has steadily increased by more than 22%. During this time of continual growth, port revenue from land leases and operations has increased from $3.9 million to more than $6.1 million, an increase of more than 56%. All this, occurring during a period in which overall Seaway tonnage has been mostly flat or slightly down from previous periods in the recent history of the Great Lakes/St. Lawrence Seaway maritime industry.

So what is the secret of Milwaukee’s success? Our vote would have to go to visionary leadership on the part of the Port staff led by Port Director Eric Reinelt. Under Reinelt’s leadership the Port has undertaken a number of initiatives designed to take advantage of market trends to better serve the Port’s highly diverse customer base.

For example, beginning in 2004 the Port saw an opportunity to expand its base as a steel distribution center for Southeast Wisconsin and Northeast Illinois. Steel traffic at the Port increased to more than 220,000 tons at the Port’s docks in 2006 and a new rail/truck trans-loading center is now open and ready for the steel traffic that is likely to flood back into the Lakes once the dollar-euro imbalance has corrected itself.

Taking advantage of the growing economies of China and other Asian nations, in 2005 the Port, in cooperation with Milwaukee Intermodal and the Canadian Pacific Railway, began container rail service between Milwaukee and Vancouver, B.C. to serve shippers interested in service to the Far East.

Another important example of the Reinelt’s vision is the Port’s leadership position in the alternative energy industry. In the last few years, the Port’s focus on that industry has led to it becoming one of the Lakes’ leaders in handling wind energy turbines and components for wind farms all across the Midwest. Additionally, the Port of Milwaukee has recently entered into a long-term lease agreement with Innovations Fuels, Inc. which plans to set up a substantial bio-diesel production facility at the Port.

When it comes to “going green” the Port is “walking the walk” itself by participating in and leading efforts ranging from controlling the influx of invasive species in ballast water to air emissions of “greenhouse gases”. The Port has gone so far as to begin retrofitting the exhaust systems on the forklifts it operates to reduce their particulate and gaseous emissions.

All of these efforts are just part of doing one’s job well according to Reinelt who, for his part, is quick to deflect attention from himself. He credits his staff, his Board of Harbor Commissioners and the City of Milwaukee with the positive developments at the Port. With genuine humility Reinelt told The Seaway Channel, “I’ve been very fortunate to have some great people to work with here in Milwaukee. We’re in a very strategic location and I think we are well-positioned to take advantage of important opportunities to serve the interests of the local and regional economy.” We at The Seaway Channel have no doubt about that.

The downturn was more painfully felt in terms of stone and coal tonnage which was more than 200,000 tons inferior to the mark set in May of 2007. The ongoing dredging crisis is at least partly to blame for the tonnage drop-off as many vessels capable of hauling 70,000 tons per trip were forced to reduce their hold payloads to 64,000 tons. A particularly telling statistic is that only two cargos topped the 65,000 ton level.

Large ships were not the only ones affected. Smaller vessels were not exempt from the effects of insufficient dredging considering that the largest cement cargo carried in May – 15,434 tons, was more than 2,300 tons less than the record for Lakes trade.

The SLSDC will use the additional funds to get to work next fiscal year on a number of important capital replacement and improvement projects designed to replace aging equipment and renew the U.S. sections of the Seaway’s roughly fifty-year old infrastructure. The SLSDC’s Canadian counterpart, the St. Lawrence Seaway Management Corporation (SLSMC), for its part, has also announced a major capital investment and infrastructural renewal agreement in conjunction with Transport Canada.

The Transportation Appropriations bill upon which action was taken by the Subcommittee last week will now go to the full Appropriations Committee for passage within the next few weeks. That bill will then be sent to the U.S. Senate for consideration. Both the House and Senate are far behind schedule in terms of passing spending bills this year. This year’s legislative calendar is also compressed because of the upcoming November election so each passing week makes the likelihood of an omnibus continuing resolution to keep the government in business greater.

For those of you looking for tales of the twin perils of Scylla and Charybdis poised to vanquish the fearless crew, you will be disappointed to learn that weeds fouling the propeller and keel have been the only external impediment to the Prozac's progress. Captain Carl Lee and crew seem to have gotten their inland sea legs and have been having a great time while mostly away from phones, email, frieght markets and the day to day annoyances of life. These have been replaced, for the time being, with good friends, lively conversation, lots of laughs, simple chores and beautiful scenery.   

So guys, it's not that we really want a Loch Ness-type sea monster to reach up and snap your mast in two. We don't really want to see a giant squid reach up and use its 40 foot long tenticles to grab each of you and rip you limb from limb. We certainly dont want Mr. Melville's white whale to swallow your 32-foot Prozac like an aspirin (although we expect that would mellow him out a bit). We don't want any of these things to happen but an epic voyage needs some drama. You understand. You see, we're starting to envy you a bit and we need something interesting to happen in order to divert our attention from our bloody buzzing cell phones and email. Safe Travels.

You can read our intrepid sailors' first-hand account of their voyage at www.carl-lee.com.