NEW YORK: Gov. Pat McCrory and House and Senate leaders agree this year that the state should start investing in upgrades for the aging ports at Wilmington and Morehead City, but they’re still working out their differences on how much money they ought to spend.
The two ports are modest operations in the tall shadows cast by North Carolina’s competitors. While the State Ports Authority collected $44 million in revenues in 2013, the take in neighboring states ranged from $140 million in South Carolina to $352 million in Virginia.
But Ports Authority CEO Paul J. Cozza aims to double his bulk and container cargo traffic over the next five years. And he hopes to claim a nice little share of the shipping surge expected on the East Coast after the completion in 2016 of a long-awaited project to double the capacity of the Panama Canal.
To make that happen, he’s pushing for more dredging at Morehead City to ward off the severe shoaling that has kept shippers from fully loading their vessels, and other port improvements. At Wilmington, Cozza wants to buy new container cranes, replace a docking berth and deepen the navigation channel to expand the port’s capacity for the bigger “post-Panamax” ships expected to begin steaming through the enlarged canal.
