PORT HURON, Mich. – Every day 3,000 trucks cross the Blue Water Bridge connecting Canada and the United States, and about 150 of them draw particular attention because they carry garbage from Toronto to be dropped into a landfill west of Detroit.

Before they’re allowed to proceed, U.S. inspectors using radiation scanners check each of the trucks for radioactivity.

“We need to make sure we’re not allowing a dirty bomb to come in,” said Kevin Weeks, director of field operations for Customs and Border Protection, a division of the Department of Homeland Security.

The dirty business of the daily garbage run has raised a predictable political dander in Michigan, where officials complain about being the receptacle for Canadian trash. The trash, though, has come to symbolize the much broader concern that tens of thousands of trucks and passenger vehicles coming through some of the most heavily traveled checkpoints into the U.S. not be carrying guns, bombs or terrorists.

Michigan has become a flashpoint in the confrontation between national and economic security.

The sense of urgency has increased in the past few weeks as the U.S. and Canada have stepped up inspection efforts and implemented plans designed to thwart potential trouble. The practical effect is more delays at the border.

Trucks into Detroit lined up across the length of the Ambassador Bridge one recent afternoon, looking like a still-life.

Even as the United States is under a heightened security alert because of the war in Iraq, there is a growing concern about the economic impact of long delays at Port Huron and Detroit, where 43 percent of the daily $1.3 billion in U.S.-Canada trade changes hands.

“This is a twofold thing,” said Wayne County Executive Robert Ficano. “It’s not only security but the economic vitality of the area … If the bridge closes down, this affects the national economy.”

U.S. and Canadian officials, mindful of the sometimes 18-hour delays into Detroit from Windsor in the days after the 2001 terrorist attacks, say they are working to ease the flow of commercial traffic and plan to implement other changes to reduce the delays for passenger cars.

In March, Canada agreed to a U.S. request to inspect vehicles leaving Canada. Canadian and American officials have implemented programs to speed traffic across the border. Using smart cards, truck haulers and regulator visitors who qualify as low-risk are directed to special lanes. Plans are being implemented to use biometric identifiers – voice recognition, fingerprints and retinal scans – to speed the process even more.

Still, officials note the border crossings into Michigan set them apart from most of the land-based crossings along the mostly unprotected 5,500-mile border with Canada.

“Michigan’s crossings are infrastructure concerns,” Weeks said, referring to the potential of terrorist attacks against Detroit’s Ambassador Bridge and Windsor Tunnel, Port Huron’s Blue Water Bridge and Sault Ste. Marie’s International Bridge. “These are structures that have to be protected.”

Detroit is the busiest commercial crossing in the United States. Some 3.5 million commercial vehicles crossed the Ambassador Bridge in 2001. That’s one truck every 8 seconds. Passenger car traffic was 8.7 million in 2001, or one car every 2.5 seconds.

The economic stakes are high for Canada as well. Exports account for 40 percent of Canada’s gross domestic product and 85 percent of those exports go to the United States. If crossing the border became a bigger problem, manufacturers in both countries could be forced to look for domestic suppliers.

Weeks said the Michigan crossings represent a microcosm of the national clash between national and economic security. “We’re challenged here because of the North American Free Trade Agreement and a growing trade relationship with Canada. The entire country will be facing this in the future,” Weeks said.

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(c) 2003, Chicago Tribune.

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