PLAN SAYS PANAMA CANAL EXPANSION WONT MATTER DIDDLY-SQUAT TO PORT OF BROWNSVILLE GROWTH

By Juan Montoya
Remember when former Port of Brownsville commissioner Martin Arambula was on the hustings trying to become the Democratic Party's nominee for Cameron County Judge?
He'd rhapsodize about the Mazatlan-Durango Highway linking the port to the China trade through Matamoros and into the interior of the United States, and the expansion of the Panama Canal that would make Brownsville a natural conduit for goods and produce to come to Brownsville.
Once those two major infrastructure projects came to fruition, Arambula asserted, all would be well and we'd be poised (that word, again) to rocket our way to prosperity.
Arambula was one of those elected officials who drank the United Kool-Aid and came back for seconds. Who hasn't seen his presentation on the recycling program before the United Brownsville board whose members listened on politely and humored him? His presentations, of course, were meant to justify his obscene salary at more than $90,000 for policy-records management at the district, more than what 56 of the 58 campus principals in the district are earning.
Nonetheless, his adherence to the Unite Brownsville line was commendable.
Well, wouldn't you know it, the $452,000 study that the Port (with Arambula's vote), the Brownsville Public Utility Board, and the United Brownsville's cash cow, the Greater Brownsville Incentives Corporation, paid for to guide us to economic Nirvana  basically bursts Arambula's bubble as it relates to the expansion of the Big Ditch.
" The expansion project will effectively double the capacity of the Canal by adding a new set of locks and widening existing channels," the section of the report outsourced to Cambridge Systematics states.
This is important, the writers say, because "post-Panamax" size vessels are estimated to carry upwards of 27 percent of the world's containerized cargoes and 80 percent of the estimated ships on the vessel order book in recent years are post-Panamax vessels of 8,000 to 14,000 twenty-foot equivalent unit (TEU) capacity.
But here's the killer for Arambula (and the port's) Panama-Canal pitch.
"It is possible that liner carriers will set up one or more Caribbean hubs – perhaps in Kingston, Jamaica or (if political conditions change) in Cuba – to consolidate 'feeder shipments' to and from multiple small- to mid-sized Gulf ports.
"However, Brownsville's proximity to major markets relative to its competitors (e.g., Houston and Corpus Christi) put it at a disadvantage to capture increased Panama Canal trade and it is unlikely that Brownsville will benefit tremendously from the widening of the Canal."
Instead, the well-heeled (and overpaid) consultants say, support and nurture the maquilas in Matamoros (one of their Imagina Matamoros is Segio Arguelles, the FINSA industrial park owner) and hitch your economic development wagon to that star.
Now, who's right here? Is it the port commissioners who envision the Panama Canal making the Port of Brownsville flush with Asia trade? Or is it the planners and United Brownsville who got them to pay $452,000 to burst their bubble and who are pushing for Brownsville to support the Matamoros maquiladoras as proposed by Carlos Marin, Sergio Arguelles and IBC President Fred Rusteberg?