Congressman: Soo Locks Need To Be Rebuilt

U-S House Democrat Rick Nolan of Minnesota says a new lock is needed at Sault Sainte (soo saint) Marie to connect Lake Superior with the other four Great Lakes. Nolan told reporters at Duluth/Superior that if the one-billion-dollar project does not go into the president’s infrastructure package, he’ll propose it separately in Congress. Tom Rayburn of the Lake Carriers Association says there are two locks at the Soo, but only the Poe Lock can handle most of the Soo’s shipping traffic on the Great Lakes. And if the 49-year-old Poe Lock is not replaced, Nolan says it would plug up Lake Superior’s key business link to Lake Michigan and elsewhere — while reducing the nation’s gross domestic product by one-point-one trillion dollars and laying off eleven million people in the region.