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Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Company Business Information, Profile, and History

2122 York Road
Oak Brook, Illinois 60523
U.S.A.

Company Perspectives:

Dredging is a specialized field that can include handling a full range of natural underwater materials--silts, clays, sands and rock formations. Great Lakes applies its dredging expertise to deepen and maintain waterways, shipping channels, and ports; create and maintain beaches; excavate harbors and build docks, terminals, and piers; reclaim land; restore aquatic and wetland habitats; and excavate pipeline, cable, and tunnel trenches.

History of Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Company

Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Company has been in the dredging business for 115 years and has made major contributions to the nation's ports and shorelines. Its dredging operations generally fall into three different categories: capital dredging (involving ports), beach nourishment (replenishing or fortifying eroded areas), and maintenance (redredging and improvements). In addition to dredging in its namesake waters, Great Lakes also builds lighthouses, bridges, piers, and docks. Famous landmarks constructed with the aid and expertise of Great Lakes include Chicago's Navy Pier and Michigan Avenue Bridge; MacArthur Lock in Sault Ste. Marie; the St. Lawrence Seaway between the United States and Canada; the Mackinac Bridge in upper Michigan; and coastal port and pier work in Africa, the Caribbean, Europe, the Middle East, and South America.

In the Beginning: The 1890s

The story of Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Company begins at the end of the 19th century in Chicago, Illinois. William A. Lydon and Fred C. Drews founded Lydon & Drews as a marine construction company. Formed in 1890, the firm described itself as "Contractors for Dredging, Docking and General Pile Driving," and was adept at building bridges, piers, lighthouses, and tunnels. Lydon served as the firm's engineer and first president while Drews, who had worked in marine construction, served as general superintendent. The partners opened an office in the Unity Building on Dearborn Street, which later became the Chicago Chamber of Commerce building.

The marine construction company's first job was to dig a brick-lined water tunnel under Lake Michigan from an offshore water intake at Chicago Avenue to a new "crib" under the lake. The project came to be known as the "Two Mile Crib," and was vital to the growing water works of Chicago. The contract could make or break the fledgling company, especially since the work was set to begin on Friday the 13th of February. Fortunately, neither Lydon nor Drews was particularly superstitious and the Two Mile Crib was completed without incident.

Two years after the company's founding, Lydon & Drews worked on one of Chicago's most amazing undertakings, the 1892 Columbian Exposition. The immense World Fair was to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Columbus's discovery of America and to top the festivities of the Paris Exposition when the Eiffel Tower was unveiled. The reputation of the entire United States rested with the Chicago Exposition, and leading architects and engineers from around the country contributed to the immense undertaking. Lydon & Drews was tapped to fortify the lake's shoreline where numerous buildings were under construction for the Exposition. Some of what was constructed on Lake Michigan's coastline became the foundation for Navy Pier.

Over the next decade Lydon & Drews finished several successful marine projects, including another water intake tunnel and crib for the city's water supply. In 1894 the firm built its first rig, appropriately named "Dredge No. 1," a huge dredging machine with a four-yard dipper or bucket. A second dredger was built in 1896, followed by a third in 1898. By the end of the 1890s Lydon & Drews had earned a reputation for excellence and timely completion. With a major portion of Chicago's livelihood tied to its waterways, Lydon & Drews became instrumental in the city's growth as a pivotal midwestern port. The company's success also allowed it to expand operations to other nearby ports.

A New Century and New Name: The 1900s-20s

In the 20th century, Lydon & Drews had grown substantially through the acquisition of four Chicago companies (Chicago Dredge & Dock Company, Green Dredging Company, Hausler & Lutz, and McMahon & Montgomery). This growth prompted Lydon and Drews to change the firm's name to the somewhat cumbersome Chicago & Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Company in 1903 and then to its present incarnation, Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Company. The latter was incorporated in 1905 in New Jersey because of that state's favorable corporate laws.

At the time of its creation Great Lakes Dredge & Dock (Great Lakes) owned equipment valued at more than $1.7 million, including 13 dredges (11 with dipper-buckets and two with clamshell-shaped equipment), ten tug boats (with one named for Lydon and another for Drews), dozens of scows (flat-bottomed, squared boats often pulled by tugs), and six derricks (sturdily constructed towers for lifting and moving heavy items). Great Lakes also owned and operated two machine shops and had expanded operations into Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin.

The new Great Lakes had eight board members and 21 stockholders. Lydon and his wife owned 29 percent of the company and Drews, who was not on the board and no longer an officer, held 9 percent. Other Chicagoans who had joined Great Lakes included Harry Wild (Lydon's brother-in-law) as treasurer and a board member, as well as John P. Hopkins (a former mayor of Chicago) and Roger C. Sullivan (a prominent Democrat), movers and shakers in Chicago's tumultuous political arena.

Great Lakes bought Duluth Dredge & Dock Company in 1905 and by 1908 had additional offices in Duluth (Minnesota), Cleveland and Toledo (Ohio), and Sault Ste. Marie (Michigan's Upper Peninsula/Ontario). In 1912 Great Lakes undertook a major project for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the Boston Harbor area, which served two very important functions: not only did the Boston project bring the company substantial work along the East Coast (prompting the formation of an Atlantic Division headquartered in lower Manhattan), but began its long and lucrative association with the Army Corps of Engineers. By 1917 Great Lakes had acquired six more companies, including two in Buffalo (New York) and two in Milwaukee (Wisconsin), to conquer all of the Great Lakes ports. The acquisitions brought the company's assets to more than $6 million.

Great Lakes suffered a shock in 1918 with the loss of its cofounder and president, William Lydon. After a brief illness, the 55-year-old Lydon was dead. He was succeeded as president by Roger Sullivan until 1920, when Harry Wild took the reins as the firm's third president. Despite the loss of Lydon's guidance, Great Lakes maintained solid growth and finished several pivotal projects in Chicago, helping the city become the Midwest's leading cultural and business center. Among the company's contributions were the Franklin-Orleans Street Bridge (1919), the Michigan Avenue Bridge (1922), and the foundations for the Adler Planetarium, Shedd Aquarium, Soldier Field, and the Field Museum (1923). Additional work included building lighthouses and breakwaters, and dredging for construction of the Great Lakes Naval Training Station. In 1924 John Cushing became the fourth president of Great Lakes. The following year revenues topped $13.8 million and earnings were $1.5 million.

Wartime Prominence: The 1930s and 1940s

In the 1930s, as the United States was in the grip of the Great Depression, Great Lakes managed relatively well working in and around its namesake waters. Projects included the Naval Armory in Chicago in 1933, the Inland Steel complex at Indiana Harbor (1935), and breakwater for Calumet Harbor (1935), with stone provided by a Lemont, Illinois quarry the company had purchased. Great Lakes lost Cushing in a plane crash in 1935, and he was replaced as president by John R. Williams, the company's top engineer, who succumbed to illness months later. Williams was replaced by Major General Edward Markham, who had served as chief of the Army Corps of Engineers during the first presidency of Franklin Roosevelt. Markham became the sixth president of Great Lakes in August 1938, and the company finished the year with robust revenues of $20.1 million and earnings of $2.2 million.

Markham's tenure was filled with militaristic discipline and bad blood as many executives left or were fired. During his seven years heading the company, accomplishments were overshadowed by increasing tension in the boardroom. In 1939 Great Lakes undertook a huge dredging job at Lake Charles, Louisiana, and bought a competing dredge company. The early 1940s brought Great Lakes into war production as the country entered World War II. Several of the company's tug boats were commandeered by the Navy, and dredgers were busy digging out docks for battleship construction. Another significant project involved the replacement of the small Sault Ste. Marie lock with the much larger and modernized MacArthur Lock. A round-the-clock project for Great Lakes, the MacArthur Lock ran ahead of schedule and opened in 1943 to much acclaim from the U.S. Navy. Great Lakes was awarded the prestigious Navy E-Flag for its contributions to the war effort.

Markham, the only outsider ever appointed president of Great Lakes, resigned in 1945 to the relief of many. A longtime engineer of the firm, William Freeley, was named president. In the immediate postwar years, Great Lakes shored up its inventory, since a number of tugs and dredgers had been damaged or lost during the war. The company bought two tugs from the Navy and installed two floating drydocks, one in Chicago and the second in Buffalo. The floating drydocks meant Great Lakes no longer had to pay to dock its tugs; they also translated into reduced downtime, such as waiting in line at commercial docks.

Booming: The 1950s-70s

In the 1950s Great Lakes was involved in many projects in and around Lake Michigan. One of the more unusual was the delivery of a captured World War II German submarine, the U-505, to Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry in 1954. The sub arrived at the company's floating drydock where it was spruced up and then towed along with the entire drydock through a dredged canal to the shore near the museum. The sub was then dragged over rail tracks to its home adjacent to the world-renowned museum (where it remains to this day). Great Lakes also was involved in the construction of the famous Mackinac Bridge between the upper and lower peninsulas of Michigan in 1954. The Mackinac Bridge was an engineering feat at five miles in length and 552 feet in height. Also in 1954, Freeley retired, and William Lydon's son, Eugene, was named president of Great Lakes.

Great Lakes was a major participant in the huge 60-nautical mile St. Lawrence Seaway project jointly undertaken by the United States and Canada in the mid-1950s, while also working on Brookley Air Force Base in Mobile, Alabama, and a host of dredging and digging jobs in Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Wisconsin, and international jobs in Colombia, Kenya, Puerto Rico, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela. Gene Lydon was felled by a massive heart attack on November 22, 1963, just hours before President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Great Lakes mourned its own leader and the country's Commander-in-Chief at the same time. Langdon Hardwicke was installed as the firm's new president. Revenues for 1963 reached an all-time high of just less than $33.4 million, with earnings climbing to $3.36 million.

Hardwicke served Great Lakes a little more than two years before retiring and was replaced in 1966. By this time Great Lakes had expanded its operations to include jobs on the West Coast and soon found its primary form of business, dredging, under fire. The growing environmental movement in the United States hit marine construction hard, with a variety of developments stymied by ecological concerns, including the federal government's own waterworks projects. It fell on the new president, John (Jack) Downs, to steer Great Lakes in an increasingly difficult era. Ecological concerns were not the only problems facing dredgers: work was hard to find and most private firms could not compete with the better equipped and funded Army Corps of Engineers. The loss of smaller competitors to bankruptcy may have given Great Lakes pause, yet the dredging giant thrived. Revenues for 1975 hit more than $56.9 million and earnings were $4.5 million. The following year revenues were steady at $57.0 million but earnings nearly doubled to $8.1 million in 1976.

Great Lakes teamed with industry leaders and the National Association of Dredging Contractors (NADC) to take on the Army Corps. The Corps' primary advantage was its line of hopper-dredges, which no private firm owned due to their immense cost. Great Lakes tapped into this exclusive market by building its own self-propelled hoppers, which seemed the future of dredging since they were huge, sturdy, and capable of carrying vast amounts of material. The company's first hopper was completed in 1977, quickly followed by a second and third. At this time the company also segued into huge international projects, with domestic dredging jobs at all-time lows. Great Lakes took its expertise to the Persian Gulf, where it completed a series of jobs, and worked on projects in Latin America. Foreign work constituted more than three-quarters of the company's revenues in 1977 alone, a trend it would repeat in the next decade. Revenues for the year climbed to $87.8 million, while earnings had nearly doubled from the previous year to $15.3 million. At the end of the decade, in 1979, Great Lakes International, Inc. was created as a holding company for the firm's growing assets.

International Expansion: The 1980s and 1990s

After its recent success abroad, Great Lakes continued its emphasis on international projects and branched into another sideline, beach refurbishment or "nourishment." Jack Downs, who had led the company for 17 years, retired in 1980 and was replaced by William Colnon, who stepped down in 1986 in the midst of antitrust lawsuits against the United States' largest dredging companies. Great Lakes was caught in the fray but survived unscathed. Another development in 1986 was passage of the Water Resources Development Act (WRDA), which allocated federal and municipal funding for constructing "super-ports" or upgrading and expanding the country's highest traffic ports. As the number one dredging firm in the nation, Great Lakes not only secured a large slice of the resulting work, but it also had gained the unflinching notice of the Chicago-based Itel Corporation.

Itel Corporation first bought stock in Great Lakes in 1985 from a New Jersey group that pulled out of a possible takeover attempt. Itel originally acquired a 5.4 percent stake in the company and increased it over the next few months to 20 percent. Great Lakes agreed to Itel's friendly takeover, selling the entirety of its stock at $62.50 per share in November 1985. DeWitt Barlow, a third-generation Great Lakes dredger, was named president in 1987; revenues for the year came in at $156.7 million with earnings of $13.3 million.

Despite a decline in domestic dredging contracts, Great Lakes stayed busy with projects like the deepening of Curtis Bay and the Port of Baltimore's 42-mile long channel in 1990, the year of its centennial. The firm also looked into further international expansion. With the resources of parent company Itel behind it, Great Lakes formed a foreign division to capitalize on global possibilities as domestic dredging jobs became harder to find. Late in the following year, however, Great Lakes was sold by Itel to Blackstone Dredging Partners LP, part of the massive Blackstone empire.

In 1992 Great Lakes became embroiled in a series of lawsuits due to repair work on a bridge in Chicago. While replacing wooden pilings, Great Lakes had inadvertently weakened an underground tunnel system built in the early 1900s. The tunnel began leaking and later collapsed, flooding the basements and lower levels of hundreds of Chicago buildings in April 1992. Lawsuits over the damage mounted into the millions, many of them naming Great Lakes along with the city of Chicago. Although initially found liable, Great Lakes was later cleared because the city had not properly maintained the tunnel system and had been aware of leaking and damage well before the flood. Despite the flood imbroglio in 1992, by 1993 Great Lakes had made great strides in its international expansion plans with projects in Africa, the Middle East, South America, Mexico, Denmark, and Sweden.

At the same time Great Lakes had pursued international growth, the company had segued into "beach nourishment" projects along American coastlines. Rebuilding and reshaping beaches and shorelines became an integral part of the company's business. A new president and chief executive also brought a new perspective to Great Lakes as Doug B. Mackie, who had joined the firm as corporate counsel in 1978, took the reins. By 1998 some of the long-awaited WDRA contracts had come to fruition, with Great Lakes securing a number of capital ("Deep Port") improvements from the Army Corps of Engineers, including port deepening in New York, New Jersey, Boston Harbor, and San Juan (Puerto Rico), as well as the construction of a massive pier in Los Angeles. During the same year Great Lakes was sold by Blackstone Dredging to Vectura Holding Company L.L.C., an affiliate of Citicorp (later Citigroup) Venture Capital. Great Lakes brought in revenues of $289 million for 1998 and $302.3 million the following year.

Another Century: The 2000s

By the year 2000 Great Lakes maintained its status as the United States' top dredging firm, with an ever increasing fleet of dredging and digging equipment. Revenues for the year were robust, due in part to WDRA contracts, at $339.1 million. In 2001 Great Lakes entered a related business segment, demolitions, with the purchase of 80 percent of the Boston-based North American Site Developers, Inc. Great Lakes increased its ownership by another 5 percent in 2003. Deep Ports projects continued to bring in the majority of the company's revenues, with projects in California, Georgia, Florida, Kentucky, Mississippi, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Texas. In 2003 Great Lakes was the first American firm to begin work in war-torn Iraq, at the Umm Qasr Port. The Iraq work was dangerous, due to ongoing hostility against Westerners, as was a construction project in the Middle East, in Bahrain. In December 2003 Great Lakes was sold for the third time in 12 years to Madison-Dearborn Partners, a Chicago-based private capital firm. Revenues for 2002 had reached $362.6 million and leapt to $398.8 million for 2003.

In 2004 Great Lakes continued reaping the rewards of the WDRA's Deep Ports contracts, winning bids for work in Louisiana, New Jersey, North Carolina, and several different dredging projects in California. International contracts included further work in Bahrain along the Persian Gulf, and a new airport in neighboring Qatar. Entering 2005 Great Lakes was on solid ground: its revenues continued to climb annually despite being bought and sold a number of times in the previous two decades. Great Lakes continued to maintain the largest and most diverse dredging fleet in the United States with 24 dredges, 27 material transportation barges, two drillboats, and numerous other specialized support vessels, valued in excess of $1 billion.

Principal Subsidiaries: Amboy Aggregates (50%); Great Lakes Caribbean Dredging, Inc. (Puerto Rico); Lydon Dredging and Construction Company, Ltd. (Canada); North American Site Developers, Inc. (85%).

Principal Competitors: Penta-Ocean Construction Co., Ltd.; Koninklijke BAM Groep nv; Weeks Marine, Inc.

Related information about Great Lakes

The largest group of freshwater lakes in the world, in C North America, on the Canada窶填SA border; drained by the St Lawrence R; consists of Lakes Superior, Michigan (the only one entirely in the USA), Huron, Erie, Ontario; sometimes L St Clair is included; water surface c.245 300 kmツイ/94 700 sq mi, c.87 270 kmツイ/33 700 sq mi in Canada; connected by navigable straits and canals (St Mary's R and the Soo Canals, Strait of Mackinac, St Clair R and Lake, Detroit R, Niagara R, Welland Canal and the St Lawrence R and Seaway), giving the lakes access to each other and to the Atlantic Ocean; used (May窶泥ec) for an enormous volume of coal, ore, grain, and other products; water pollution a recent problem.

For the African lakes, see African Great Lakes. For other uses of this term, see Great Lakes (disambiguation).

The Great Lakes are a group of five large lakes in North America on or near the Canada-United States border.

Lakes

The Great Lakes are:

Lake Superior (the largest by volume and deepest, larger than Scotland or South Carolina)

Lake Michigan (the second-largest by volume and third-largest by area; Considered together, Michigan-Huron would be larger in surface area than Lake Superior, but smaller in total water volume.

A much smaller sixth lake, Lake St. Clair, is part of the Great Lakes system between Lake Huron and Lake Erie, but is not considered one of the "Great Lakes." The system also includes the rivers that connect the lakes: St. Marys River between Lake Superior and Lake Huron, the St. Clair River between Lake Huron and Lake St. Clair, the Detroit River between Lake St. Clair and Lake Erie, and the Niagara River and Niagara Falls, between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. (Lake Michigan is connected to Lake Huron through the Straits of Mackinac.) Large islands and a peninsula divides Lake Huron into the lake proper and Georgian Bay.

The lakes are bounded by Ontario (all of the lakes but Michigan), Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan (all but Ontario), Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York. The Saint Lawrence River, which marks the same international border for a portion of its course, is a primary outlet of these interconnected lakes, and flows through Quebec and past the Gaspテゥ Peninsula to the northern Atlantic Ocean.

Sprinkled throughout the lakes are the approximately 35,000 Great Lakes islands, including Manitoulin Island in Lake Huron, the largest island in any inland body of water, and Isle Royale in Lake Superior, the largest island in the largest lake (each island large enough to itself contain multiple lakes).

Today, 20 percent of the world?s fresh surface water is contained in the five great lakes: 5,473 cubic miles (22,812 kmツウ), or 6 quadrillion gallons (22.81 quadrillion litres) in all. larger than the states of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont and New Hampshire combined.

The Saint Lawrence Seaway and Great Lakes Waterway opened the Great Lakes to ocean-going vessels. However the move to wider ocean-going container ships - which do not fit through the locks on these routes - has limited shipping on the lakes. There are some icebreakers that operate on the lakes.

The lakes have an effect on weather in the region, known as lake effect. clear:both;">

**Relative elevations, average depths, maximum depths, and volumes of the Great Lakes.**
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Notes:	The area of each rectangle is proportionate to the volume of each lake. All measurements at Low Water Datum.
Source:	EPA's Great Lakes Atlas: Factsheet #1.

Relative elevations, average depths, maximum depths, and volumes of the Great Lakes.

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PlotArea = width:525 height:200 left:50 bottom:15
AlignBars = justify

Period = from:-1000 till:600
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ScaleMinor = unit:year increment:100 start:-1000

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  id:blue2 value:rgb(0.1,0.1,0.8)

  id:blue3 value:rgb(0.2,0.2,0.85)

  id:blue4 value:rgb(0.3,0.3,0.9)

  id:blue5 value:rgb(0.4,0.4,0.95)

  id:textinbar value:yelloworange

  id:textoutsidebar value:redorange

Define $elevation = shift:(0,15) mark:(line,textoutsidebar) textcolor:textoutsidebar
Define $avgdepth = mark:(line,textinbar) textcolor:textinbar
Define $maxdepth = shift:(0,-11) mark:(line,textoutsidebar) textcolor:textoutsidebar

PlotData=

 align:center

 bar:Superior from:-732 till:600 width:194 color:blue1

    $elevation at:600 text:"600 ft~(183 m)"

    $avgdepth at:117 shift:(0,1) text:"483 ft (147 m)"

    $maxdepth at:-732 text:"1,332 ft (406 m)"

 bar:Michigan from:-348 till:577 width:113 color:blue5

    $elevation at:577 text:"577 ft~(176 m)"

    $avgdepth at:298 shift:(0,2) text:"279 ft~(85 m)"

    $maxdepth at:-348 text:"925 ft (282 m)"

 bar:Huron from:-173 till:577 width:101 color:blue3

    $elevation at:577 text:"577 ft~(176 m)"

    $avgdepth at:382 shift:(0,1) text:"195 ft (59 m)"

    $maxdepth at:-173 text:"750 ft (229 m)"

 bar:Erie from:359 till:569 width:49 color:blue2

    $elevation at:569 text:"569 ft~(173 m)"

    $avgdepth at:507 align:left shift:(30,2) textcolor:textoutsidebar text:"62 ft (19 m)"

    $maxdepth at:359 text:"210 ft~(64 m)"

 bar:Ontario from:-559 till:243 width:44 color:blue4

    $elevation at:243 text:"243 ft~(74 m)"

    $avgdepth at:-40 shift:(0,2) text:"283 ft~(86 m)"

    $maxdepth at:-559 text:"802 ft~(244 m)"

 align:left shift:(35,0) textcolor:green

    at:243 text:"surface~elevation"

    at:-40 text:"average~depth"

    at:-559 text:"maximum~depth"

Notes:

The area of each rectangle is proportionate to the volume of each lake. All measurements at Low Water Datum.

Source:

EPA's Great Lakes Atlas: Factsheet #1.

Geologic pre-history

The Great Lakes were formed at the end of the last ice age about 10,000 years ago, when the Laurentide ice sheet receded. When this happened, the glaciers left behind a large amount of meltwater (see Lake Agassiz) which filled up the basins that the glaciers had carved, thus creating the Great Lakes as we know them today. Because of the uneven nature of glacier erosion, some higher hills became Great Lakes islands. The Niagara Escarpment follows the contour of the Great Lakes between New York and Wisconsin -- Herbert Simon called this escarpment the spinal cord of my native land.

Economy

The lakes are extensively used for transport, though cargo traffic has decreased considerably in recent years. The Great Lakes Waterway makes each of the lakes accessible.

During settlement, the Great Lakes and its rivers were the only practical means of moving people and freight. (See Edmund Fitzgerald and Le Griffon.) Barges from middle North America were able to reach the Atlantic Ocean from the Great Lakes when the Erie Canal opened in 1825. By 1848, with the opening of the Illinois and Michigan Canal at Chicago, direct access to the Mississippi River was possible from the lakes. Since many immigrants settled for a time in New England before moving westward, many areas on the U.S. side of the Great Lakes also have a New England feel, especially in home styles and accent.

Since general freight these days is transported by railroads and trucks (lorries), domestic ships mostly move bulk cargoes, such as iron ore and its derivatives, coal and limestone for the steel industry. Because of the location of the coal fields in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, and the general northeast track of the Appalachian Mountains, railroads naturally developed shipping routes that went due north to ports such as Erie, Pennsylvania and Ashtabula, Ohio.

Because the lake maritime community largely developed independently, it has its own language. Foreign boats are known as salties.

One of the more common sights on the lakes is the 1,000 by 105-foot (305 by 32-m), 60,000 U.S. long tons (61,000 metric tonnes) self-unloader.

Modern economy

The Great Lakes are used as a major mode of transport for bulk goods. The brigantine Le Griffon, which was commissioned by Renテゥ Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, was built at Cayuga Creek, near the southern end of the Niagara River, to become the first sailing ship to travel the upper Great Lakes on August 7, 1679.

In 2002, 162 million net tons of dry bulk cargo was moved on the Lakes. A few small cruise ships operate on the Great Lakes including a couple of sailing ships. Sport fishing, commercial fishing, and Native American fishing represent a US$4 billion a year industry with salmon, whitefish, smelt, lake trout, and walleye being major catches.

The Great Lakes are used to supply drinking water to tens of millions of people in bordering areas.

Passenger traffic

Several ferries operate on the Great Lakes to carry passengers to various islands, including Isle Royale, Pelee Island, Mackinac Island, Beaver Island, both Bois Blanc Islands, Kelleys Island, South Bass Island, North Manitou Island, South Manitou Island, Harsens Island, Manitoulin Island, and the Toronto Islands. As of 2005, three car ferry services cross the Great Lakes: a steamer across Lake Michigan from Ludington, Michigan to Manitowoc, Wisconsin; a high speed catamaran on a second Lake Michigan route from Milwaukee to Muskegon, Michigan. An international ferry across Lake Ontario from Rochester, New York to Toronto ran during the summer of 2004, but is no longer in operation. There are parts where no land is visible because of the immense size of the Lakes: thus they are sometimes referred to as inland seas.

Storms and reefs are a common threat, and many thousands of ships have sunk in these waters. The Great Lakes Storm of 1913 became the worst Great Lakes storm on record: at least 12 ships sank, and 31 more were stranded on rocks and beaches. USS Freedom (LCS-1) is newest warship to be built on the Great Lakes. The Rush-Bagot Agreement of 1817 limits the number of armed vessels permitted on the Great Lakes.

The greatest concentration of these wrecks lies near Thunder Bay (Michigan), beneath Lake Huron, near the point where eastbound and westbound shipping lanes converge. Today there is a U.S. NOAA Marine Archeology Research Station located in the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary.

Invasive species

The Great Lakes have been hit economically by various invasive species, namely the sea lamprey, Quagga mussel, and zebra mussel. An electric fence has been set up across the mouth of the Great Lakes in order to keep an invasive species of Asian carp out of the area. Some water is diverted through the Chicago River to operate the Illinois Waterway but the flow is limited by treaty. Under the U.S. "Water Resources Development Act"www.ohiodnr.com/water/planing/greatlksgov/fedstatut.htm, diversions of water from the Great Lakes basin requires the approval of all eight Great Lakes governors, which rarely occurs. In 1998, the Canadian company Nova Group won approval from the Province of Ontario to withdraw 158,000,000 US gallons (600,000 mツウ) of Lake Superior water annually to ship by tanker to Asian countries. Since that time, the eight Great Lakes Governors and the Premiers of Ontario and Quebec have negotiated the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin Sustainable Water Resources Agreement www.cglg.org/projects/water/docs/12-13-05/Great_Lakes-St_Lawrence_River_Basin_Sustainable_Water_Resources_Agreement.pdf and the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin Water Resources Compact www.cglg.org/projects/water/docs/12-13-05/Great_Lakes-St_Lawrence_River_Basin_Water_Resources_Compact.pdf that would prevent most future diversion proposals and all long-distance ones.

Restoration

In the U.S. Congress, the Great Lakes Collaboration Implementation Act frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=109_cong_bills&docid=f:h5100ih.txt.pdf puts into practice priority recommendations of a $20 billion Great Lakes clean-up plan released in December as part of the Great Lakes Regional Collaboration www.glrc.us, a planning process established by President Bush in 2004. The Great Lakes Collaboration Implementation Act would:

?Stop the introduction and spread of aquatic invasive species by enacting a comprehensive national program.
?Prevent the Asian carp from entering the Great Lakes by authorizing the Corps of Engineers to maintain and operate the dispersal barrier on the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, and prohibit the importation and sale of Asian carp.
?Restore fish and wildlife habitat by reauthorizing the Great Lakes Fish & Wildlife Restoration Act at $20 million.
?Prevent sewage contamination by reauthorizing the State Revolving Loan Fund and provide $20 billion over five years to assist communities nationally with improving their wastewater infrastructure.
?Clean up contaminated sediment under the Great Lakes Legacy Act by authorizing $150 million per year.
?Phase out mercury in products by establishing a new grant program and improving existing research programs.
?Coordinate and improve Great Lakes programs by establishing the Great Lakes Interagency Task Force and the Great Lakes Regional Collaboration process.

The Healing Our Waters(R) - Great Lakes Coalition www.restorethelakes.org has formed to help groups and citizens across the United States advocate for restoring the health of the Great Lakes.

Additions to the Five Great Lakes

Lake Champlain on the border between upstate New York and northwestern Vermont briefly became labelled by the U.S. government as the sixth "Great Lake of the United States" on March 6, 1998, when President Clinton signed Senate Bill 927. This bill, which reauthorized the National Sea Grant Program, contained a line penned by Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) declaring Lake Champlain to be a Great Lake. The claim was viewed with some amusement by other countries, particularly in the Canadian media as many Canadians were originally unfamiliar with the lake's existence (despite its role in the War of 1812) and the lake is small compared to other Canadian lakes (such as Great Bear Lake which has over 27x more surface area). Following a small uproar (and several New York Times articles), the Great Lake status was rescinded on March 24 (although Vermont universities continue to receive funds to monitor and study the lake).

Similarly, there has been interest in making Lake St. Clair a Great Lake. According to the bi-national (U.S. and Canadian) resource book, The Great Lakes: An Environmental Atlas and Resource Book, "the largest Great Lakes fish harvests were recorded in 1889 and 1899 at some 67,000 tonnes (147 million pounds)," though the beginning of environmental impacts on the fish can be traced back nearly a century prior to those years.

By 1801, New York legislators found it necessary to pass regulations curtailing obstructions to the natural migrations of Atlantic salmon from Lake Erie into their spawning channels. In the development of ecological problems in the Great Lakes, it was the influx of parasitic lamprey populations after the development of the Erie Canal and the much later Welland Canal that led to the two federal governments attempting to work together ? (expanses of lake bed covered by various combinations of such substances as solvents, wood preservatives, coal tar, and metals) found in Lake Superior, the St. Clair River, and other portions of the Great Lakes region.

According to the authoritative bi-national source The Great Lakes: An Environmental Atlas and Resource Book, "Only pockets remain of the once large commercial fishery." Marie, Michigan

Marquette, Michigan
Houghton, Michigan

Lake Michigan

Green Bay, Wisconsin
Manitowoc, Wisconsin
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Racine, Wisconsin
Kenosha, Wisconsin
Chicago, Illinois
Gary, Indiana
Michigan City, Indiana
Benton Harbor, Michigan
Holland, Michigan
Muskegon, Michigan
Norton Shores, Michigan
Traverse City, Michigan
Escanaba, Michigan

Lake Erie

Monroe, Michigan
Toledo, Ohio
Sandusky, Ohio
Cleveland, Ohio
Erie, Pennsylvania
Fort Erie, Ontario
Buffalo, New York
Detroit, Michigan
Leamington, Ontario
Windsor, Ontario

Lake Ontario

Rochester, New York
Oswego, New York
Hamilton, Ontario
Kingston, Ontario
Toronto, Ontario
Oshawa, Ontario
St. Catharines, Ontario

Lake Huron

Alpena, Michigan
Bay City, Michigan
Port Huron, Michigan
Sarnia, Ontario
Owen Sound, Ontario
Collingwood, Ontario

References

Beltran, R.

Chronology

Key Dates:
1890: Lydon & Drews Company is formed in Chicago.
1892: Lydon & Drews provides shoreline work for the Columbian Exposition.
1894: "Dredge No. 1," the company's first dredging machine, is built.
1905: The firm is renamed Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Company.
1943: Great Lakes builds the MacArthur Lock at Sault Ste. Marie.
1979: Great Lakes International, Inc. is created as a holding company.
1985: Itel Corporation acquires Great Lakes International.
1986: The Water Resources Development Act, known as the "Deep Water" legislation, is passed.
1990: Great Lakes celebrates its centennial.
1991: Itel sells Great Lakes to Blackstone Dredging Partners LP.
1998: Blackstone sells Great Lakes to Vectura Capital, a division of Citicorp.
2001: Great Lakes acquires a majority stake in North American Site Developers, Inc.
2003: Citicorp sells Great Lakes to the Chicago-based Madison-Dearborn Partners.
2004: Great Lakes wins several new contracts in the Persian Gulf.

Additional topics

Company HistoryTransportation Services

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