The Waterways Journal
19 September 2005
By John Shoulberg
The destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast can send a wake-up call to the nation that the work of the Corps of Engineers is important, U.S. Sen. Christopher "Kit" Bond (R-Mo.) told an appreciative audience last week at the annual meeting of the Midwest Area River Coalition (MARC 2000).
Prior to the hurricane, "if we had proposed a flood control project that would have protected New Orleans from a Category 5 hurricane, I guarantee you it would have been called unjustifiable pork, enormously expensive, unaffordable, and even a boondoggle, which is typically the response we get when we push the Corps of Engineers to do its vital work," Bond said. "Today, a project of that magnitude would clearly be seen as a bargain, not only in terms of dollars, but more importantly in terms of lives."
He noted that the work of the Flood Control Act - passed in response to the disastrous flood of 1927 - is still not finished. "We're still trying to build - and fund - what's needed," he said.
But there's no doubt that the work done so far has been successful, he said. In the 1993 Upper Midwest flood, for example, Corps levees were credited with preventing $19 billion in property damage. Since 1928, the nationwide figure tops $800 billion, he said.
Noting that the Water Resources Development Act of 2005 (WRDA) will be hitting the Senate floor soon - following a resounding 406-14 passage in the House of Representatives - Bond said that supporters of water infrastructure will have to keep pushing.
"We want to move at the earliest opportunity, but we're going to have to rely on waterways coalitions and labor and agriculture to help everyone understand that safety and our economic future, both short- and long-term preparedness, are worthy of investment, and we defer them at our own great risk."
For the navigation infrastructure, the needs are clear, Bond said.
"The Corps operates and maintains some 12,000 miles of inland navigation channels. Some 2.4 billion tons of freight are handled by U.S. ports and waterways. Yet over half the locks in the U.S. have exceeded their 50-year design lives, many of them by a quarter of a century. This is why the civil engineers grade our water infrastructure at a D, not a very good grade at any school you go to.
This is critical for America's grain exports, two-thirds of which move through the waterway system, he said. But even more importantly, the value of the coal, petroleum, iron and steel that move on the waterway exceed that of the grain, he said.
"Let's make no mistake about it, high-ways and rail are critical to our nation's commerce," Bond said. "But they burn more fuel, they cost more to move, and they are near capacity with little room for growth, particularly if you look 20 to 40 years down the road.
"It takes something like 870 trucks to replace one medium-size river barge tow. It costs five times as much, burning 10 times the fuel, with seven to 20 times the pollution. Well, if anybody's been driving the interstates, they know what those caravans of 870 trucks would do to our already overcrowded highways. And the rail system has no excess capacity. The capacity for growth is on our water-ways."
Bond said the nation has three choices regarding water infrastructure: we can give up on economic growth, an option no one would favor; we can wait for a crisis and then embark on the needed repairs, which will then be more costly and take longer; or we can plan ahead and anticipate future crises, "as was done when the current system was built," he said.
Bond said that although WRDA has strong bipartisan support in the Senate, it can still run into opposition on the floor, as it did in the House. There, an amendment tying the Upper Mississippi/Illinois Waterway lock improvements to increased traffic levels over the next few years was defeated, but only after a lot of hard work by a coalition made up of the navigation industry, agriculture and labor. The coalition will need to continue its work in the Senate, Bond warned.
"We have a lot to do. There's an old Army slogan: `The difficult we do immediately; the impossible takes a little longer.' Well, this is not impossible, but it's going to be darn tough, and I'm looking forward to working with you, and we're going to need your help to get this vital legislation through."