Barging Ahead: Congress Should Make Locks and Dams a Priority
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
5 September 2010
All of us know the old proverb that begins "For want of a nail a shoe
was lost" and describes cascading consequences that include the loss of
a horse, a rider, a battle and finally a kingdom. When Congress comes
back on Sept. 13, its members need to recall this piece of wisdom amid
all the deficit-driven din for spending nothing and raising no taxes.
Some priorities cannot be put off any longer. For want of sensible,
sustained funding, the Pittsburgh region and the nation are
increasingly running the risk of an economic disaster on their rivers.
The locks and dams that keep the commercial lifeblood flowing are often
old and severely stressed -- and that inevitably translates into a
crisis waiting to happen.
Pittsburgh, the second-largest inland port in the country and a city
that owes its founding to its rivers, knows this problem firsthand. The
17 locks and dams in the region are mostly in the range of 70 to 100
years old and they show the deterioration of age. As with so much
infrastructure in America, the federal government's attitude to
investment has been shortsighted, too often assuming that out of sight
is out of mind.
Consider the latest funding for the Lower Mon project involving
upgrades at Braddock, Elizabeth and Charleroi, a project that may be
considered the poster child for pressing need and the dysfunction of
federal funding. The project started in 1994 and was scheduled to last
10 years at a cost of $750 million. Although the Braddock segment was
completed, the rest has grown to a 30-year project at a cost of $1.2
billion.
To be sure, some of this is due to engineering complications, but
seesaw funding is a large part of why taxpayer dollars have not been
used wisely. The Pittsburgh region did well as a result of stimulus
funding -- receiving about $110 million for navigation projects,
including $84 million for the Lower Mon project alone.
Without that infusion of funds, the Lower Mon work might have closed
down by now. But how much does it get going forward? In President
Barack Obama's 2011 budget, just $2 million is put aside for it -- a
figure picked up by both the House and Senate. The feast is over, the
famine begins.
If luck runs out and barge traffic is blocked by lock and dam failure,
how would this affect a company like Consol Energy, which annually
moves 24 million tons of coal in barges on the Upper Ohio, Monongahela
and Allegheny rivers to 10 power plants around the region? According to
James G. Grech, a senior vice president for marketing, the substitute
for 90,000 barge lockages would be about 960,000 trucks.
The proverbial nails to hold the system together do not come cheaply --
a concern at a time of towering national deficits. But the industry
itself is offering part of the solution, remarkably, to the extent of
accepting increased taxes on itself.
Barge industry representatives and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers met
and worked out a capital development plan that includes prioritizing
the completion of projects across the entire system and increasing by
30 percent to 45 percent the existing fuel tax of 20 cents-a-gallon
paid by the barge and towing industry. That wouldn't pay all the cost,
but it would be a great start.
Waterways Council Inc., which represents a broad coalition of
stakeholders, hopes that the capital development plan can be included
in the likely legislative vehicle, the Water Resource Development Act
2010 (HR 5892).
Congress must recognize that this industry, which is greener than road
or rail, needs urgent help with a crumbling infrastructure and that in
the long-term committing funds wisely is a better policy for the
nation's future prosperity than miserly neglect. Without that, there's
no knowing what crisis may follow for the want of political will.