In a recent article published in Great Lakes Seaway Review, Richard A. Mueller, CEO of NETSCo and SNAME President (2025–2026), argues that Great Lakes shipbuilding, icebreaking, and infrastructure planning cannot be solved by one country alone.
The Great Lakes–St. Lawrence Seaway operates as a single engineering system. Ice does not recognize borders. Water levels do not align with national budgets. A delay in Canadian waters impacts U.S. ports. Infrastructure gaps on one side ripple across the entire corridor.
Yet capital investment, shipbuilding incentives, icebreaking strategies, and long-term planning are still largely conducted along national lines.
As the Great Lakes fleet enters its first major renewal cycle in decades—under increasingly unstable climate conditions—the risks of fragmented planning are growing. Vessel design assumptions, icebreaking capacity, infrastructure modernization, and seasonal navigation strategies must align binationally or performance will suffer system-wide.
The message is not about bureaucracy. It is about engineering realism.
If the Seaway operates as one system, our technical planning must reflect that reality.
👉 Read the full article in Great Lakes Seaway Review: https://netsco.us/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/GLSR_54-3_NavArch.RichMueller.pdf