Government digs deeper to keep a port shipshape.

• Author: Gray, Tim
• Position: Brief Article

Steaming into Wilmington, the serpentine snarl of pipes a top the Jo Lonn's decks announces it as a chemical carrier. The rust-hued lower hull, usually submerged, rides high in the water, revealing that the 300-foot freighter is nearly empty. The flag, a red field quartered by a blue cross, declares its Norwegian registry.

The bigger of two ships that will sail up the Cape Fear River this day, the Jo Lonn glides past the state port, headed for ChemServe, a private chemical terminal upriver. Tomorrow, it will return to call on PakTank, a chemical company that leases space from the State Ports Authority. The authority, which operates the ports here and in Morehead City, is lucky the Jo Lonn stopped in North Carolina at all.

Many ships bypass the ports for those in Virginia and South Carolina. In fiscal 1999, 1,365 ships and barges called on Wilmington and Morehead City; 2,907 called on Hampton Roads, and 2,457, Charleston. The Tar Heel ports handled 4.9 million tons of cargo; Hampton Roads and Charleston, about 11 million tons each. Five steamship lines provide scheduled service to Wilmington and Morehead City. Fifty call on Charleston; 75, Hampton Roads. The state's ports are a pair of johnboats tucked between two ocean liners.

In July, the state and federal governments will begin a five-year, $339 million project to deepen the Wilmington port and 26 miles of the river from 38 to 42 feet. (Hampton Roads is 50 feet deep, and Charleston is being dredged from 40 to 45 feet.) Erik Stromberg, executive director of the Ports Authority, is convinced that will lure more shipping lines to Wilmington and make the port accessible to 85% of the world's commercial fleet until 2010. Now, big boats must sail in partly loaded or wait for high tide. The biggest can't call at all. And ships keep getting bigger.

But chances are, even with the dredging, Wilmington will likely remain what it has long been -- a niche port that functions more like a Third World outpost than gateway to one of the nation's leading exporting states. The bulk of cargo leaving Wilmington is raw materials -- or close to it. Wood chips, pulp, lumber and other forest products account for 72.9% of exports. In Morehead City, which already has 45 feet of water, phosphate and wood chips account for 98.7%.

Put another way, most of what leaves North Carolina's ports isn't electronic goods made in Research Triangle Park or textiles from the Triad but stuff that has been chopped down and chopped...