Seaway for New Orleans

New Orleans is the second-biggest U.S. seaport* even though shipmasters dislike to travel the 117 meandering, treacherous, bar-marked miles up the Mississippi River from tidewater. Last week the old New Orleans dream of a shorter, straighter and deeper route took a step toward reality. The Senate passed and sent to President Eisenhower a bill authorizing, as a federal project, a 77-mile, $88 million channel running almost in a straight line from the city southeast across the marshlands to the Gulf of Mexico. Louisiana Representatives F. Edward Hebert and Hale Boggs immediately began pushing for a congressional appropriation to cover preliminary engineering work.

The channel, 36 ft. deep and 500 ft. wide, would be served by modern cargo-handling and other terminal equipment. The U.S. Army Engineers Corps, which has studied the project, estimates that ships using the canal instead of the old river route would save about 1 1/4 days per trip. The total yearly saving from more efficient use of ships and port facilities, estimate the engineers, would amount to $6,767,000, v. annual amortization and maintenance costs of roughly $4,383,200.

*First: New York, with $7.2 billion in cargoes handled, v. $1.5 for New Orleans; third: Baltimore with $1 billion.

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