Controversy Erupts Over NASCO and the NAFTA Super-Highway

Human Events Online ^ | Jun 26, 2006 | Jerome R. Corsi

[hedgetrimmer]

Last Thursday in a radio interview with the 55KRC Morning Show in Cincinnati, Tiffany Melvin, executive director of North America’s SuperCorridor Coalition, told host Jerry Thomas that my June 12 Human Events article on NASCO was “absolutely inaccurate.”



Melvin declined to be interview for this article, stating in an e-mail her current priority was to answer the “accusations, bad information, and false assumptions” in the June 12 article. “After I have a chance to get my life back and return to a normal schedule, I will contact you,” she wrote. “In the meantime, I will continue to respond to the inquiries your erroneous reporting has caused.”

What is NASCO? It is a non-profit 501c6 organization that functions as a trade association and sometimes lobbying group for the public and private entities that are members. NASCO is an acronym for North America’s SuperCorridor Coalition, which is the official title of the organization. According to the group’s website, NASCO is “dedicated to developing the world’s first international, integrated and secure, multi-modal transportation system along the International Mid-Continent Trade and Transportation Corridor to improve both the trade competitiveness and quality of life in North America.”

Specifically, NASCO supports the corridor that encompasses Interstate Highways 35, 29 and 94, and “the significant east/west connectors to those highways in Canada, the United States, and Mexico.” That NASCO is organized around promoting NAFTA trade is obvious. Again, as stated by the group’s website:

From the largest border crossing in North America (The Ambassador Bridge in Detroit, Michigan and Windsor, Canada), to the second largest border crossing of Laredo, Texas and Neuvo Laredo, Mexico, extending to the deep water Ports of Manzanillo and Lazaro Cardenas, Mexico and to Manitoba, Canada, the impressive, tri-national NASCO membership truly reflects the international scope of the Corridor and the regions it impacts. (Emphasis in original.)

From an industry perspective, NASCO is one of the organizations supporting various north-south corridors identified to facilitate NAFTA trade. NASCO has absorbed the former North American International Trade Corridor Partnership, a non-profit group organized in Mexico with similar goals of internationalizing U.S. highways into a NAFTA structure to facilitate trade with Mexico and Canada. The North American Inland Port Network (NAIPN) is also listed as a NASCO partner. NAIPN functions as a NASCO sub-committee to develop “inland ports” along the highway corridors “to specifically alleviate congestion at maritime ports and our nation’s borders.”

To get a feel of the NAFTA corridor movement, we also reference CANAMEX, a trade organization that promotes a Western tri-lateral route utilizing I-19, I-10, I-93 and I-15 in the states of Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Idaho and Montana to link the three countries in trade. Another non-profit group, the North American Forum on Integration (NAFI), identifies four bands of NAFTA corridors (Pacific, West, East and Atlantic), all relying primarily upon internationalizing north-south existing interstate highways into NAFTA trade corridors.

One of Melvin’s main bones of contention was that NASCO did not stand for the building the NASCO corridor into a Trans-Texas Corridor-type super-highway. “NASCO is working on existing infrastructure,” Melvin told 55KRC. Yet, the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) is a NASCO member and NASCO supports the Trans-Texas Corridor as part of that relationship. Melvin’s e-mail stated:

The Trans-Texas Corridor is not a NASCO initiative. We support the project in Texas, as it solves critical funding problems and congestion IN TEXAS. I know of NO plans to extend it into additional states. It is not the first section of a NAFTA Super Highway. It is not ready to begin construction next year.

According to the 4,000-page draft environmental impact statement, the plan is to build a 4,000-mile network of new super-highways that will be “up to 1,200 feet wide (at full build-out) with separate lanes for passenger vehicles (three in each direction) and trucks (two in each direction), six rail lines (separate lines in each direction for high-speed rail, commuter rail, and freight rail), and a 200-foot wide utility corridor.”

On March 11, 2005, TxDOT signed a definitive agreement with Cintra Zachry, a limited partnership formed by Cintra Concesiones de Infraestructures de Transport in Spain and the San Antonio-based Zachry Construction Co. “to develop the Oklahoma to Mexico/Gulf Coast element of the Trans-Texas Corridor (TTC-35). This agreement calls for the Cintra-Zachry limited partnership to pay Texas $1.2 billion “for the long-term right to build and operate the initial segment as a toll facility.” The initial TTC-35 segment is scheduled to be built roughly parallel to I-35 between Dallas and San Antonio. The final public hearings are scheduled in Texas for July and August. While construction contracts have yet to be finalized, Cintra-Zachry presumably holds those rights as a result of the $1.2 billion payment to Texas, as described in the March 11, 2005, contract. The timeline published on the Trans-Texas Corridor website envisions final federal approval by the summer of 2007, with the construction of the first TTC-35 segment to follow immediately afterward.

In regard to whether NASCO intends to rely only on existing interstate highway infrastructure, the NASCO statement of purpose cited above calls for building “the world’s first international, integrated and secure, multi-modal transportation system.” The TTC-35 project is the first super-highway project in the U.S. proceeding to incorporate railroad as part of the design, producing a truly “integrated” and “multi-modal” highway-railroad system.

Do other states plan to build TTC like roads? Most states today are strapped for cash even to maintain existing highways. Still, the investment banking and international capital pools that put together the TTC project are certain to want to apply the model to additional states along the I-35 corridor. I would also note that Cintra-Zachry is unlikely to be building TTC-35 with the idea that the four-football-fields-wide super-highway just ends at the Oklahoma border. Once the investment bankers have the deal sealed in Texas, the TTC plan and funding are certain to be taken to many other states, including Oklahoma and Kansas.

The city of Kansas City, Mo., and the Kansas City SmartPort are both listed on the NASCO website as NASCO members. The Kansas City Area Development Council has directly confirmed that the Kansas City SmartPort intends to build a Mexican customs facility to facilitate out-going traffic headed to Mexico. A copy of the Kansas City council resolution authorizing the construction of the Mexican customs facility can be found on the Internet.

Melvin also maintained that NASCO is “not competing with West Coast ports or trying to take work from them.” This argument is made, however, in a brochure posted on the website of the Kansas City SmartPort, titled “Lazaro Cardenas—Kansas City Transportation Corridor Offers Opportunities for International Shippers.”

Yet, in March 2005, Kansas City signed a cooperative pact with representatives from the Mexican state of Michoacan and with representatives from Lazaro Cardenas, a deep-port town on the Pacific coast south of the Baha peninsula, to increase the cargo volume between Lazaro Cardenas and Kansas City. The goal is to bring super-ships carrying 4,000 containers or more from China and the Far East into Mexico so the containers can be moved into the heart of the United States, bypassing the West Coast ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Right now transportation costs about double the cost of cheap goods made in China and the Far East. The Kansas City SmartPort plan offers a methodology for cutting out U.S. workers from the International Longshoremen’s Association, the United Transportation Union and the Teamsters. As the brochure explains:

Shipments will be pre-screened in Southeast Asia and the shipper will send advance notification to Mexican and American Customs with the corresponding “pre-clearance” information on the cargo. Upon arrival in Mexico, containers will pass through multiple X-ray and gamma ray screenings, allowing any containers with anomalies to quickly be removed for further inspection.

Container shipments will be tracked using intelligent transportation systems (ITS) that could include global positioning systems (GPS) or radio frequency identification systems (RFID) and monitored by the ITS on their way to inland trade-processing centers in Kansas City and elsewhere in the United States.

The Kansas City SmartPort brochure could not be more explicit: “Kansas City offers the opportunity for sealed cargo containers to travel to Mexican port cities with virtually no border delays. It will streamline shipments from Asia and cut the time and labor costs associated with shipping through the congested ports on the West Coast.”

The plan to put the NAFTA Super-Highway is intended to be done incrementally, designed to stay below the radar of mainstream media attention. The full build-out of the Trans-Texas Corridor’s 4,000-mile planned network is projected to be completed in discrete stages, over the next 50 years. This gives plenty of time to expand the super-highway network incrementally, state-by-state up-and-down the various identified NAFTA corridors.

The plan to create a North American Union as a regional government in 2010 is directly stated only in the May 2005 task force report, “Building a North American Community.” Still, we must examine how the Security and Prosperity Partnership signed by President Bush with Mexico and Canada in Waco, Tex., on March 23, 2005, is being implemented. We find that government offices such as the Security and Prosperity Partnership working groups being organized within the U.S. Department of Commerce are signing trilateral memoranda of understanding and other agreements with Mexico and Canada consistent with the goal of fulfilling the CFR’s dream to bring about a North American Union by 2010.

We find the same here. NASCO is a trade organization that will never fund or build a single highway anywhere. Yet NASCO supports its members and NASCO members are hard at work building the NAFTA Super-Highway.

[deport]

So we will wind up shipping most goods through Mexico instead of our west coast ports?

---

Depending upon the route you take but one route would take you to Laredo. Also don't forget the I-69 Corridor from South Texas to Port Huron, MI. Another route[s] could be coming in from one of the Mexico's Pacific ports. Corsi keeps writing about Lazaro Cardenos [which is farther south of Topolobampa and would use Laredo] and then there is the other from Topolobampo [La-Entrada_Al-Pacifico>

La-Entrada_Al-Pacifico

Walmart has already moved a lot of it's container imports from the West Coast to Houston with a new facility that just opened. They will be shipping up to 28% of the total container imports thru the facility and use the Panama Canal with smaller ships and a longer shipping time.

All said and done there are many options being explored and which will be the viable ones is yet to be determined. But I suspect one or more will come into being as commerce isn't going to be denied, imo. The Luddites are long gone and the buggy whip isn't needed for the current transportation modes.

Now back to the paint brush/roller for a while.

[Kimberly GG]

Port Authority and Alliance to Promote Logistics Corridor in China

"Officials of the Port Authority of San Antonio (formerly Greater Kelly Development Authority), Free Trade Alliance San Antonio, Port of Lázaro Cardenas, Hutchison Port Holdings and transpacific shipping lines will travel to China the first week of April to promote a newly developed logistics corridor for Chinese imports into the U.S. market.

In January of 2006, a collaboration of several logistics entities in the U.S. and Mexico began operation of a new multimodal logistics corridor for Chinese goods entering the U.S. market.  The new corridor brings containerized goods from China on either Maersk or CP Ships transpacific service to the Mexican Port of Lázaro Cardenas.  There, the containers are off loaded by a new world class terminal operated by Hutchison Ports based in Hong Kong.  The containers are loaded onto the Kansas City Southern Railroad de Mexico where they move in-bond into the U.S.  The containers clear U.S. customs in San Antonio, Texas and are processed for distribution."

http://www.freetradealliance.org/newsletter/admin/e_nternationaldetail.asp?id=795


History of the the "NAFTA Railway" - "Two Worlds - One Route"
www.kcsmartport.com/pdf/SmtPrtOneRoute.pdf

[american spirit]

The more I look at this I'm wondering if we'll see Mexican truckers driving these loads all the way to KC or elsewhere and what will be the licensing regulations as well as who or what will monitor the increased truck traffic for safety? Every so often in the Dallas area there's some sort of horrific crash involving these trucks on I-35 and many people in the area avoid that interstate as much as possible.

[mthom]

At least you're honest about your support for the radical blurring (at least) of our borders. Most on your side will ridicule the possibility until its on the table then they will defend it.

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

General and Trans-Texas Corridor SUPER-PING!

My apologies to anyone who was already pinged to this article.

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

This article seems to be a good one for starters, since it includes an example of rebuttal by a NASCO officer, so you get some balance to the report. I've pinged both my lists to it.

[Ben Ficklin]

What you refer to as a "radical blurring of our borders", sane people see as being important to protect our borders.

For all the inadequacies of inpections of containers entering our ports, those containers passing thru Mexico and Canada get less scrutiny.

It is important that the US have the authority/ability to control Mexico's and Canada's ports.

[E.G.C.]

BTTT

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

bump.

[hedgetrimmer]

New Leadership in U.S.-Canada Relations:
Leveraging Federalism to Manage North American Integration
June 27, 2006


As North American integration proceeds, there is a growing and improving amount of collaboration between the two federal governments in Washington and Ottawa with the governments of states and provinces in addressing issues of shared concern. The conference panels will explore topics of growing U.S.-Canada cooperation from provincial, bilateral, and global perspectives. Our luncheon keynote speakers will include former U.S. Ambassadors to Canada Governor Blanchard and Governor Cellucci as well as The Honorable Anne McLellan, former Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness and The Honorable Gary Mar, Alberta Minister of International and Intergovernmental Relations.

North American Integration Monitor

[nopardons]

bttt

[hedgetrimmer]

Did you know about this?

The Seven Revolutions

[Kimberly GG]

I was reading from another website and wondered if you are familiar with Lionel Sosa, the creation of MATT.org and any connection with NAU and Bush?

http://www.alipac.us/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=32735

[hedgetrimmer]

I hadn't seen that.

Its been noted for a very long time that nonprofit corporations are trying to undermine the country. They are integral to the plan for the NAU, because the government through unconstitutional public private partnerships use them as an arm to execute these plans. Since they are 'private' their records are not open to the public. Since they are tax exempt, they have special privileges that common citizens to not.

[Smartass]

No hadn't seen that one yet...Thank you!
I book marked it and will read it later.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[Kimberly GG]

Interesting that the map you posted does not show anything into Canada, yet there are others that do. Do you know why?

[Diddle E. Squat]

Well, at least Corsi is adding more information as it is pointed out to him. This is actually a pretty good article, except for when he starts analyzing and jumps to silly conclusions. He's still looking at the sun rising in the east and setting in the west and deducing that the sun revolves around the earth, but he's dropped some of his tinfoil conclusions after being thoroughly refuted. Progress, I guess.

BTW, trains are already running from Lazaro Cardenas, but not to Kansas City. Maybe sometime in the next year, and same for Houston, but right now they are just running to Jackson, MS, and onto Atlanta (with either now or soon connecting to other eastern markets.) No big deal, surprisingly the world didn't end.

[Diddle E. Squat]

Sheesh. The Port of Long Beach (and LA, Oakland, Seattle, etc.) isn't being 'abandoned', they are booming, but are reaching buildout. They've already switched to 24 hour operation, so the ability to expand capacity is about to end. Same for all the US west coast ports, surrounded by some of the most expensive real estate and no other locations suitable for a large port. Where would you build the next port? Not many options for Canada, either, and Alaska doesn't have a rail connection (which would be amazingly expensive and an engineering challenge to build across permafrost and numerous mountain ranges.) Mexico is simpoly a natural overflow for all this trade growth.

[Smartass]

That was an existing railway map...

This is the highway map you're looking for.
With Kansas City being the location of the
Mexican Customs House, on American soil!