By Anthony Reynolds
Ontonagon, MI – The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will discontinue its annual dredging of Ontonagon Harbor, thanks to budget cuts from President Bush. The President has proposed reducing the corps' budget by $500 million, forcing them to only dredge ports with annual commerce over one million tons. Currently, Ontonagon Harbor only sees 200,000-300,000 tons of product unloaded every year. Smurfit-Stone Container (the county's top employer) and Ontonagon's power plant both get their coal exclusively by ship. Wayne Schloop of the Corps of Engineers says the long-term effects of not dredging the harbor could put those and other businesses in jeopardy. Schloop says the harbor should be okay for a year or two, but beyond that it will become unusable for commercial traffic. The harbor has been dredged annually since the 1960s, due to the amount of sediment dumped into it by the Ontonagon River. Schloop says the city could hire a private contractor to dredge the harbor, but admits it's an expensive move.