Up-to-date development of the Bahia Blanca Estuary and region was tied to the improvement of the access channel to the main Ports located in the innermost section. Since the late 19th century the Ports constituted one of the main gates to distribute the agricultural produce of a vast region to the world markets. This fact, made the Ports of Bahía Blanca one of the most important in Argentina, which lead to becoming one of the nation’s railway and road hubs.
As the traffic and size of bulk carriers grew, it became apparent that the waterway needed to be adapted. Being the State the owner of the ports and responsible for the waterways, this premise was not adequately fulfilled.
It was not until late 1980’s that the State decided to make Bahía Blanca the deep-water port of the Nation, thus conducting dredging and expansion of its waterways, allowing ships of up to 45 feet draft to sail using the considerable tide window available. Later on in the early 90’s, as a result of a change in policy, Bahia Blanca became the first Self-administered Port in Argentina. This provided the possibility to plan and invest directly on the port system the revenues generated by the Port itself. This circumstance leads to a considerable improvement of the facilities and services, which in time promoted the arrival of new terminals and industries to the region.
Since then, the Consorcio de Gestión del Puerto de Bahía Blanca (CGPBB) has pursued the goal of being the Country’s most important deep-water port, keeping up to international standards regarding services and Aids to Navigations.
A great portion of the revenues have been applied to the maintenance of its waterways, since it is located in an area subject to constant siltation. Today dredging represents roughly some 60% of the total budget. It becomes paramount to make a comprehensive planning of the waterways to promote adequate depth and sizes for the current fleet, thus lowering dredging volumes.
In 2017 the CGPBB has taken a big step in Port Planning. For the first time in its history it has undergone, with the help and supervision of Port Consultants of Rotterdam, a thorough process of devising a Plan looking at 2040. This Plan is the result of a comprehensive data collection, interviews and analysis considering not only the CGPBB perspective, but also the points of view of all the parties involved in the Port’s activities. It also included the local population of Ingeniero White, a city adjacent to the port area, the Provincial Environmental Agency and local Environment NGOs, Universities and the Local Oceanographic Research Centre.
This work lead to the definition by the terminal operator’s needs, according to their perspective, in relation to the deepening of the waterways to cope with future vessels to be received at the port. This means a change of paradigm, were the actual waterways will be defined by the needs of its users, as opposed to what was done up to now where the users were limited to make the best of what the State (and after the CGPBB) offered in terms of size.
This change will lead to a more flexible channel design, where the actual size of the waterways will be the required at the time by its users. As a result, the dredging volumes will be the required to maintain the used depth, thus proving more sustainable both economically and environmentally. Obviously, the CGPBB must keep constant updates on the possible vessels to call on Bahia Blanca to predict with due time (at least a couple of years in advance) the needs for modifying the design.
Working in close cooperation with all the stake holders, keeping constant updates of the needs of the users will allow to fulfil the Vision set for by 2040: “to become one of the most important deep-water ports not only of Argentina but also of the region in terms of cargo handled”. Achieving this also in a more sustainable way.