For Hub, deeper waters to mean deeper pockets
A $350 million project to deepen Boston Harbor for giant container ships, years in the making, has finally begun, and setting the stage for billions of dollars in added economic impact, officials said.
“The container companies are using bigger ships. If we can’t handle the bigger ships, they’re going to go elsewhere,” Massport chief executive Thomas Glynn said yesterday. “The Army Corps (of Engineers) estimates, if we do the dredge, then we might be able to double the number of containers from what it is now.”
After years of attempts to secure state and federal funding, the dredging officially began yesterday, as two massive barges spent much of the day beginning the work to deepen Boston Harbor. The project is expected to take up to three and a half years, but could bring as much as $2.7 billion in additional economic benefit to the New England region, Glynn said.
The dredging is necessary, officials say, because container ships, which have deeper hulls, have only gotten larger and larger over time, and have surged since the expansion of the Panama Canal. For those ships to come to Boston, the harbor floor has to be lowered. The project will be funded by $130 million in state and Massport money, with another $220 million coming from the federal government.
“The return on this investment will be dramatic and significant, for the people in South Boston, for the people in Massachusetts and New England overall,” Gov. Charlie Baker said.
U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren — who along with Sen. Edward Markey and U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch led the charge for federal funding — said the dredging project is the kind of federal investment that will pay off the most.
“This is how we build a future,” Warren said. “It creates good jobs in the short run and it creates the necessary conditions for good jobs in the long run.”