More Business at the Port of Oswego

This is a view from the pedestrian bridge over the Oswego River toward Lake Ontario. The Port of Oswego is on the right side of the picture, while a cement storage facility is on the left. The Oswego lighthouse is just visible in the center of the background. The photo was taken in June 2006 for the website http://www.city-data.com

Things are looking up at the Port of Oswego on Lake Ontario. According to Sen. Charles Schumer, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has received $650,000 to perform much-needed dredging at the Port of Oswego, as part of a $6.5 million appropriation to the Corps for Great Lakes dredging. The removal of accumulated silt that is clogging the harbor will allow ships with heavier cargos to unload at the port. Now, a Canadian company is interested in developing Oswego as the only container ship port on Lake Ontario. Under this plan, large cargo ships would dock at the Melford Terminal in Nova Scotia and transfer their cargo containers to Great Lakes ships that would bring the containers to Oswego, where they would be distributed by rail and truck. According to the Administrator of the St. Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation, the Melford Terminal will be fully operational in 2011 or 2012, and Oswego may end up handling three cargos a week consisting of 600 containers. This would require some expansion of the current port facilities and create some new jobs, which is welcome news for the City of Oswego and Oswego County. Oswego County's unemployment rate is the fifth highest in New York State.

Recently, the mayor of Oswego announced that UniStar Nuclear Energy Corporation had submitted a license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build a fourth nuclear power plant at Nine Mile Point in Scriba, New York, near Oswego. While not everyone is looking forward to yet another nuclear reactor on the shores of Lake Ontario near the City of Oswego, most local people are anxious for the jobs, including 4000 construction jobs, that this plant would bring. Some people find this willingness to have a fourth nuclear plant strange, but it's a genuine Oswego phenomenon.