IMMEDIATE RELEASE              November 7, 2001

A billion of anything is difficult to comprehend.

Try four billion.

How about four billion metric tons of ship cargo?

Cargo is an undefined term without knowing what that cargo is.

So, using an arbitrary factor of cubic feet per ton based on a blend of iron ore, coal, grain, limestone and other commodities, the Duluth Seaway Port Authority has calculated that four billion tons of cargo, stacked in a 10 by 10-foot column, would reach 250,522 statute miles---or about 10,000 miles beyond the distance from the earth to the moon.

That's how much cargo has now passed through the Port of Duluth-Superior, the Port Authority announced today aboard a 1,000-foot lake carrier at Superior's Midwest Energy Resources Company coal facility.

Based on records kept since the opening of the Duluth Ship Canal in 1871, the four billionth ton of port cargo was loaded in mid-morning aboard the Walter J. McCarthy Jr.

Port officials commemorated the milestone with a presentation to McCarthy Captain Lawrence Smyth. The McCarthy, owned and operated by American Steamship Co., Buffalo, N.Y., loaded about 57,000 metric tons of western coal for Nanticoke, Ont.

"We know the actual total is greater than four billion tons," said Duluth Port Director Davis Helberg, "because interlake cargo moved through the Superior side of the harbor after the 1855 Soo Locks opening and prior to the creation of the Duluth Ship Canal in 1871. But there are no valid records prior to 1871, so we're basing this on official data."

Total cargo through the port in 1871 totaled 84,205 metric tons. The port reached one billion tons in 1927, two billion in 1950 and three billion in 1973. The Port Authority said the rapid growth of cargo in the 1940s and 1950s was directly related to huge volumes of iron ore shipped during World War II and the Korean War.

When will port cargo reach five billion tons?

"Many moons from now," said a port official.

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CONTACT: Lisa Marciniak, Port Promotion Manager, Phone 218-727-8525

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