INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — U.S. and Canadian Coast Guard crews
kept up their battle Monday to clear pathways for vessels hauling vital
raw materials on the ice-clogged Great Lakes, where a shipping logjam
forced a weeklong shutdown of the nation’s largest steel factory.
Traffic
remained largely at a crawl after a winter that produced some of the
heaviest ice on record across the five inland seas, where more than half
the surface area remained solid this week. Icebreaking ships slogging
across Lake Superior were still encountering ice layers 2 feet to 3 feet
thick. In some areas, wind and wave action created walls of ice up to
14 feet high.
United States Steel Corp.’s plant in Gary, Ind., had
resumed limited operations after receiving a shipment over the weekend
of iron ore from a company mill near Detroit, which was sending one
additional load, spokeswoman Courtney Boone said.
Two ships were
scheduled to arrive Tuesday with ore from mines in northern Minnesota
following a two-week voyage across Lake Superior, which ordinarily would
take three days.
Other companies were hoping their supplies would be adequate to avoid significant disruptions.
"Nobody’s
stockpile situation is very good," said Glen Nekvasil, a spokesman for
the Lake Carriers’ Association, which represents companies that operate
57 U.S.-flagged freighters on the Great Lakes. "It’s still very slow
sledding."
Only three ships were able to haul coal on the lakes in
March, their cargos combining for 102,000 tons — down 70 percent from
the same month in 2013, he said. Coal trade was 54 percent below the
long-term first-quarter average.
The Gary Works mill generates
steel for industries such as construction and auto manufacturing.
Production resumed at one of the mill’s three furnaces after Sunday’s
shipment was received, Boone said. The Gary Works is capable of
producing 7.5 million tons of steel per year.
U.S. Steel was able to operate off stockpiles for some time before the ice began affecting production,
Boone said.
Charles
Bradford, a steel industry analyst, said the company should have done
better planning even though this winter was among the harshest in recent
memory. At one point, ice extended across 92 percent of the Great
Lakes, falling just short of the record set in 1979.
"They know that every winter the Great Lakes freeze over," Bradford said. Boone declined to
comment.
The
shipping season officially began two weeks ago with the opening of
navigational locks on the St. Marys River connecting Lakes Superior and
Huron, a bottleneck for vessels hauling iron ore and coal to
manufacturers and electric power plants. But just one convoy of vessels —
including two icebreakers and the two ships hauling iron ore — had
traversed Superior with loads of freight.
Two other coal haulers
were docked in Superior, Wis., waiting to make deliveries to a power
plant in Marquette, Mich., said Mark Gill, director of vessel traffic
service for the U.S. Coast Guard in Sault Ste. Marie. Five empty vessels
were expected to begin crossing Lake Superior on Tuesday to pick up
iron ore.
The We Energies Presque Isle power plant in Marquette
was operating just three of its five generating units to conserve coal
until more arrives, spokesman Barry McNulty said. Even so, there wasn’t
enough demand to disrupt service, he said. The plant serves about 22,000
customers, mostly in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
DTE Energy,
which operates five coal-fired plants in southeastern Michigan, has
dealt with dwindling stocks by taking some units out of production for
maintenance ahead of schedule and making up for the loss by buying power
from the grid, spokesman Scott Simons said.
"This will hold us over until we can rebuild our supplies," Simons said.
General
Motors has not had any delays or material shortages because of Great
Lakes shipping problems, spokesman Tom Henderson said.
Nine U.S.
Coast Guard ships are capable of breaking ice but only one, the
Mackinaw, is equipped to deal with the thickest formations, Gill said.
The Canadian Coast Guard dispatched two heavy-duty vessels to assist.
About
three-quarters of Lake Superior, the largest and deepest of the Great
Lakes, remained ice-covered. Gill estimated it would be about two weeks
before the surface is clear enough for freighters to make the crossing
without an icebreaker escort.
Even then, the icebreakers probably will be on duty well into May and possibly as late as Memorial Day.

"We’ll
be constantly on search-and-destroy missions, finding big pieces of ice
and breaking them into smaller pieces," Gill said.
__
Flesher reported from Traverse City, Mich.
Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights
reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or
redistributed.