1000 



114 



Net adverse impacts could be either public services and facilities 

 from population influxes or loss of ecological or recreational resources.® 

 While many Great Lakes ports are in large metropolitan areas and will 

 incur few of these types of impacts, others like Sandusky, Lorain, and 

 Ashtabula, Ohio ; Saginaw and Muskegon, Michigan ; and Green Bay 

 and Superior, Wisconsin are in smaller urban settings and yet receive 

 over one million tons of coal or oil annually.^* Rapid expansion of port 

 facilities in these areas could conceivably cause net adverse impacts in 

 both ways. 



Superior, Wisconsin is an excellent case in point. Superior has a 

 population of 32 thousand and is located in the Duluth-Superior 

 Standard metropolitan statistical area with a population of 150 thou- 

 sand. (8) Coal traffic in Superior is projected to increase 8 fold by 

 1980 while oil traffic is projected to increase 30 thousand tons annually 

 to a level of 500 thousand tons in 1980.(8) Fifty-one million dollars 

 of expansion is on-going by Oretran, Inc. for new coal facilities fi- 

 nanced by industrial bonds. The city is financing pollution control 

 and abatement through $6 to $10 million worth of bonds. (8) Bond 

 guaraiitees could aid the city. Detroit Edison is currently spending 

 $40 million to construct a coal dock in nearby Duluth to handle coal 

 iricomiiig by unit train from Montana. (6) The utility is planning to 

 transship the low sulfur coal by 700' Freighters to St. Clair, Michi- 

 gan. (6) Lakehead Pipeline Company wants to spend $11 million on 

 Superior Port facilities to receive oil products from an Edmonton, 

 Alberta pipeline to store near the docks and hence ship to Canadian 

 ports. (8) Environmentalists are preventing this from occurring thus 

 far because of the fear of oilspills on both Lake Superior (covered by 

 Federal Oil Spill legislation) and onshore (not covered). (5) Net 

 Adverse Impact money might be useful here too. 



•Proposed DuPont-Murphy Amendment to H.R. 3981 ; definition of "net adverse Impact." 

 ^ Great Lakes Basin Commission framework study, pages 29-31. 



