Ship Channel depth affects authority's revenue stream

If the Houston Ship Channel had been a foot shallower, it would have cost the Houston economy $373  million in 2008 and 2009, a recent study found.

When the channel depth decreases, ships — especially tankers - must lighten their loads, bringing less cargo in and out of the region and increasing transportation costs, according to the Texas Transportation Institute study, commissioned by the Port of Houston Authority. The study didn't examine the effects of depth on the many container ships that traverse the channel.

"The economic impacts are staggering," port authority CEO Alec Dreyer said Thursday in a meeting with Houston Chronicle editors and reporters.

Annually, the Port Authority asks the federal government to allocate money for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to dredge the channel and maintain its depth, but the government typically doesn't provide all the money the task requires.

The channel from the Turning Basin docks just east of downtown to beyond Galveston should be 36 to 45 feet deep, depending upon the location.

Because of silting from Buffalo Bayou and other streams that intersect the channel, it must be dredged every two or three years, Dreyer said.

More than 80 percent of the channel is not at its designed depth or width, he said.

The Corps of Engineers receives about 9 cents for every ton of cargo handled along the Houston Ship Channel. That compares with 44 cents per ton for other waterways on the Gulf and East coasts, Dreyer said.

Port authority officials are lobbying federal authorities to allocate some of the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund for dredging. Last year, Ship Channel users paid about $130 million into this fund, and dredging the channel to its full depth next year would cost about $80 million, Dreyer said.

When a major expansion of the Panama Canal is complete in 2014, larger container vessels with deeper drafts will transit that waterway and call on Houston.

"Much bigger ships are coming here," Dreyer said.

"Much bigger ships are coming here," Dreyer said.

Port authority Chairman Jim Edmonds predicted that the ports benefiting most from the Panama Canal expansion will be Houston and Savannah, Ga.

jenalia.moreno@chron.com