Barging in: how heavy metal floats up inland waterways to feed the massive maw of Nucor's steel mill.

• Author: Maley, Frank
• Position: Feature

The 14,000-ton Portsmouth pulls into the Port of Morehead City, the barge's belly brimming with gnarled chunks of castaway steel--the spent casings of a rapid-fire industrialized society--hauled from New Jersey by New Canaan, Conn.-based Moran Towing. Into the port flowed 160,457 tons of scrap metal during 2003.

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This load's journey is far from finished. Moran's tugboats maneuver smaller barges next to the Portsmouth. One clump of shredded steel after another is hoisted into the smaller barges for a trip inland. The Portsmouth can hold enough to fill five of them.

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Then tugs spend 24 hours nudging them 191 miles through the shallow blue-green water of the Intracoastal Waterway, into Albemarle Sound and up the Chowan River, where waits an inferno that will melt each piece of steel and mingle its molecules with its mates' in heat that reaches 2,900 degrees. Charlotte-based Nucor runs this metal hell, near Tunis in Hertford County. The steel mill consumed a million tons of scrap last year. About 45% came by barge--about 35% of that through Morehead City. The rest arrived by rail or truck. The mill melts the scrap, then rolls and cuts the steel into plates.

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