Great Lakes St. Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation

What this funds

The Great Lakes St. Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation (GLS or Corporation), a wholly owned government corporation, is responsible for the operations, maintenance, and infrastructure renewal of the U.S. portion of the St. Lawrence Seaway between Montreal and Lake Erie. This principally includes operating and maintaining the two U.S. Seaway locks (Eisenhower and Snell) located in Massena, N.Y., and performing vessel traffic control operations in areas of the St. Lawrence River and Lake Ontario. GLS activities directly impact the safe and efficient waterborne movement of commercial goods that result in significant economic benefits to eight U.S. states in the Great Lakes/Seaway region. In terms of value created for the American taxpayer and the stakeholders engaged in the movement of commercial trade through the St. Lawrence Seaway, every $1 appropriated to GLS million increase from FY 2026 enacted. The GLS budget supports two programs - the Seaway Operations program and the Seaway Infrastructure Program (SIP). Seaway Operations and Maintenance - GLS requests $25.0 million to provide the financial and personnel resources necessary to perform operational, maintenance, and administrative activities to maintain the waterway's historically high reliability rate of operation. GLS operations and maintenance activities have resulted in a near-perfect reliability rate of 99 percent for commercial users for more than 60 years. Having moved 37.0 million metric tons of cargo in 2025, the St. Lawrence Seaway is recognized globally as a vital commercial transportation route supporting North America's supply chain. The request supports 128 full-time equivalent employees, which is crucial for maintaining GLS's roster of skilled occupations including crane operators, Seaway Infrastructure Program (SIP) - GLS requests $25.0 million to support on-going capital investments as well as to break ground on critical overdue projects. The SIP serves as the GLS capital plan and addresses the needs of capital infrastructure assets in Massena, N.Y., which vehicles, tugboats, and equipment. Global commercial trade moving on the Seaway is dependent on GLS's safe, efficient, and operational infrastructure, making the SIP integral to the operation and mission of GLS. Included in the SIP request is: $7.5 million to rehabilitate the 65-year-old electrical power distribution infrastructure at the GLS's Maintenance Base site. The project would increase power reliability, including by installing backup generators, and enable future critical capital improvements 1 Economic Impacts of Maritime Shipping in the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Region. Calculation based on 37.7 million metric tons moving through GLS's locks in 2023 and GLS's FY 2024 enacted appropriation ($40.3 $6.0 million for the replacement or rehabilitation of operational facilities on the north side of Snell Lock as part of a multi-year Facility Master Plan that addresses GLS's obsolete workplace and storage facilities in Massena, N.Y. $3.6 million for the construction of a centralized warehouse that consolidates operations and maintenance inventory from outlying buildings into a single location. $2.4 million to relocate and replace an existing obsolete facility with a modern Marine Services building, which will provide specialized maintenance areas in a waterfront-adjacent location and optimize the efficiency of tugboat and navigation aid repairs. During the 2024 navigation season, GLS recorded 20 hours, 58 minutes of lock downtime, which was due to malfunctioning lock equipment, resulting in a lock availability rate of 99.70 percent for the 297-days 2025 season. The successful planning and execution of the SIP is a key reason for the achievement of the near-perfect reliability rate. The SIP program is consistent with corresponding efforts by our Canadian counterparts, as well as broader industry initiatives to improve maritime infrastructure throughout the Great Lakes Seaway System. In December 2023, GLS released the results of an industry survey detailing U.S. and Canadian public and private sector investments in capital infrastructure related to Great Lakes/Seaway maritime activity, including the SIP. The survey conservatively estimates $8.4 billion in existing and planned Great Lakes/Seaway maritime infrastructure investments between 2 Infrastructure Investment Survey of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Seaway System, Martin Associates,

Extracted from GLS, p. 1. Verbatim; nothing here is paraphrased.

Contracts funded by this line

1 linked contract. These are obligations — lifetime awarded money — and they are not comparable to the request above and are never added to it. No total is shown: an award linked to several lines is counted in full on each, so the sum would not be a fact.

Confidence mix · 1 medium

Linked contracts are a floor, not a census. Coverage is bounded by how distinctively a program is named and, for performer links, to RDT&E and Procurement — O&M and military construction publish no performers. Budget figures are FY2027 request dollars; contract figures are obligations. The two measure different things and must never be summed together.

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Answers come from the figures on this page and nothing else. These dollars are parsed from Transportation's Congressional Justification and are approximate — confirm anything that matters against the cited page.