This week’s episode of “WisBusiness: the Podcast” is with Dean Haen, director of the Brown County Port & Resource Recovery Department.
He shares the latest developments at the Port of Green Bay, where shipping has been disrupted recently due to abnormally high levels of water flow through the Fox River.
Northeastern Wisconsin got 30 inches of snow through several snowfalls in April, followed by 8 inches of rain falling on the local watershed that drains 6,600 square miles, Haen explains. As a result, that water has had to pass through waterways in the region to ultimately reach Lake Michigan, impacting the port and the commercial activity it supports.
“That duration has resulted in the port being closed … since approximately about April 18th, unable to get vessels in because we have high velocity [water flow] and that’s unsafe for navigation for these ship captains,” he said in an interview recorded Tuesday.
County officials had sought solutions by appealing to lawmakers and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, requesting reduced outflows at dams in Neenah and Menasha to temporarily allow ships to dock. But ultimately, no action was taken to address the issue, which is expected to abate this week after nearly a month of shipping disruption.
Haen says this level of water flow is unheard of in recent memory, noting he’s been at the port since 1999.
“This has not occurred in my tenure, or as far as I can look in the history of the Port of Green Bay ever,” he said. “So we’re playing from a playbook we’d never foreseen or had happened in the past.”
While officials were hopeful water velocity would fall to navigable levels by the end of this week, Haen notes the last month has already taken a toll on the region’s economy.
“It’s been impactful,” he said. “The Port of Green Bay is made up of some large corporations, but the majority of the terminal operators are, you know, sizable companies but not large. And each vessel that was unable to transit into Green Bay has a financial cost to those companies.”
Many of the vessels anchored in the bay and were still stuck waiting earlier this week. Others were redirected to the Port of Milwaukee, where shipments were unloaded and moved north by truck at “huge cost” to the companies.
“There’s a significant economic loss in all the scenarios of what these companies have been making business decisions on, based on Green Bay not being available,” he said.
Listen to the podcast below, sponsored by UW-Madison:
