Deep Drafts, Rivers, Bridges and Dollar Stores

When I saw the video of the giant 3 football long container ship crashing into the Francis Scott Key Bridge, the first thing I thought about was deep draft container ships and the issues we have had on the Columbia River here on the other side of the U.S. I took a community college economics course in 1998, at Clatsop CC in Astoria, OR where the mighty Columbia River meets the immense Pacific Ocean. The teacher required that we report upon a local economic issue, with careful research on both sides of public opinion. I chose the proposed deepening of the Columbia River shipping channel by the Army Corps of Engineers -ACE. I had friends working with Columbia River Keeper, so I began with a sense of the importance of the issue. The shipping channel through the Columbia must be dredged on a regular basis by the ACE to keep it navigable for large container ships. The issue was, should they authorize a massively increased amount of dredging in order to accomodate the new generation of large container ships, with drafts 3 times the depth of the current ones? Can you see how this relates to the recent disaster in Baltimore? The inner harbor there has facilities for those massive container ships. They must make certain people very rich, and offer lots of goods made in other countries cheaply, also cheap to move. This is where the dollar stores come to mind. Do you ever wonder, "How is it possible to make these items and ship them for 1.25? The answer to cheap things almost always involves hidden costs elsewhere. It is worth the time to research the back story of what we buy. In this case I make the connection between cheap goods and disrupted salmon runs, impacted harbors, costly accidents and general waste. Not buying extraneous stuff is a statement we can make. It's worth pondering.