Panama Canal Expansion Could Boost Hampton Roads and Virginia Economy

Sunrise over Hampton Roads harbor - port facilities are across the harbor from our street

Despite the efforts of the Republican Party of Virginia backwards and unwelcoming to anyone who is not white, heterosexual and conservative Christian, the Hampton Roads region and to a lesser extent other parts of the state could nonetheless receive a huge economic boost next year when the expansion of the Panama Canal is completed and the superior aspects of Hampton Roads harbor could make the area the premier container ship port on the East Coast. If the projected economic boost occurs, one can only hope that it will also work to make the area more progressive - many of the European shipping lines are based in countries far more socially progressive - and boost the population and help the GOP's base in rural Virginia to be forever out voted by the urban areas of Virginia.  The Richmond Times Dispatch looks at the prospects for Hampton Roads:

The Port of Virginia — and the state’s economy — should be able to benefit from the expansion of the Panama Canal, due to go into operation at the end of 2015, Panama Canal and Virginia Port Authority officials said Friday.

“Virginia’s port has the draft and capacity,” María Eugenia Sánchez with the Panama Canal Authority said at the Governor’s Conference on Agricultural Trade. “They are in very good condition.”

The canal’s expansion “is going to be beneficial to us,” said Thomas D. Capozzi, the Virginia Port Authority’s chief commercial officer. “It really plays to our advantages — deep water and rail connections.”

The century-old canal’s $5.25 billion expansion now under construction is expected to create demand for ports to handle the new Panamax ships, vessels the maximum size the canal can accommodate.

Now limited to 5,000-container vessels, the Panama Canal will be able to handle ships carrying 13,000 containers when the expansion goes into service in 2015, Capozzi said.

“That will make the East Coast more competitive vis-à-vis the West Coast” for ships carrying cargo from Asia, he said.

At 50 feet, Hampton Roads has the deepest shipping channels on the East Coast, capable of accommodating vessels carrying 10,000-plus containers, the authority said.

A port like Hampton Roads, which is deep enough and well-enough equipped with commercial transportation infrastructure to handle the supersized ships, could be a big winner.

 More than 30 international steamship lines service the Hampton Roads port, and the Norfolk Southern and CSX railroads offer on-dock, double-stack intermodal service to major markets in the Midwest and the Southeast, the authority said.

The expansion project entails building two new sets of locks, one on the Pacific side and one on the Atlantic side, as well as widening and deepening the navigational channels in Gatun Lake and Culebra Cut, an artificial valley that was cut through the continental divide and that forms part of the canal.

The expansion of the Canal touches a personal note - my mother's father worked on building the original canal and received a commendation from then president Theodore Roosevelt (see image below).   It's where he first became involved in medicine and eared the funds to put himself through medical school.  After World War I - he ironically was stationed in Hampton, Virginia for the duration of the war - he returned to Central America and practiced medicine for roughly 20 years.

Roosevelt in Panama at the construction of the original canal