With the completion of the nine-year-long, $5.4 billion Panama Canal expansion, ports along the East Coast of the United States have seen a major jump in activity. The canal’s new ability to handle today’s mega tankers resulted in a 23 percent increase in tonnage passing through the locks. In turn, this increased activity brought tens of millions of additional dollars in tolls and fees to ports all along the East Coast, according to The Wall Street Journal.

These ports have been planning for increased traffic for more than a decade. The South Carolina Port Authority (SCPA), for example, has allocated $1 billion to dredge and upgrade Savannah’s port, which saw a 10 percent jump in cargo passing through during the year following the opening of the Canal. The SCPA is also putting $2 billion into Charleston’s port, where container volume rose 10 percent in the fiscal year ended June 2017. New York spent more than $4 billion for expansion work on its por