The Port of Monroe is the State of Michigan’s only port on Lake Erie, and is a part of a unique supply chain within the Great Lakes system that sees product moved between several ports and ultimately beneficially reused.
Since 2014, the Port of Monroe has handled synthetic gypsum and bottom ash from the DTE Monroe Power Plant. The power plant receives cargos of coal and limestone by lake freighter, and the coal burning process generates the byproducts. The Port has helped facilitate the movement of these cargoes to beneficial reuse markets in Michigan, Ohio, and Ontario, Canada.
A significant amount of these byproducts are moved to cement plants in the northern lower peninsula and are used as supplementary cementitious materials in the cement making process. Cement leaves these plants on specialized cement carrying freighters for distribution to regional terminals in the Great Lakes.
It is these byproducts that put the Port of Monroe “back on the map” and allowed us to diversify and grow our operations in other areas, which include wind energy components, steel coils, and anticipated containerized cargo in the future.
