Editorial - The Waterways Journal
26 February 2007
No matter how one looks at President's Bush's proposed budget numbers for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for 2008, they are bleak. Presidential proposals for the Corps have been bleak and have been growing bleaker for three decades. Now there is talk again of new user fees.
We reported last week in "Washington Waves" just how bleak these proposed new numbers are. Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas) conducted a meeting of the House Water Resources and Environment Subcommittee and called the president's proposal penny-wise and pound-foolish. The National Waterways Alliance agreed in principal, saying that the total funding proposal of $4.871 billion is close to $3.5 billion less than the Corps needs.
"This administration fails to recognize that continued investment in water-related infrastructure is a key element for stimulating and improving the U.S. economy, an economy built on the investments of our predecessors," Rep. Johnson said in the opening statement of the aforementioned meeting, which she conducted.
Rep. Johnson is right, of course. But don't we all sense a hint of déjà vu here? Every year it is the same story. We can go back 30 years and find the same complaints about Corps budgets proposed by succeeding administrations. The Texas congressional delegate is correct in echoing what has been the mantra of water resource development supporters literally for decades.
Johnson says the president's request for $1.5 billion for the Corps' construction account is $500 million less than the likely appropriation for the current fiscal year. She said that amount could carry out if funds were available.
Well, numbers will be numbers, you know. They get kicked around and juggled and shaken up and tossed out for public consumption, often not looking the same each time they of money is 45 percent below the Corps' own capability numbers — numbers that represent the amount of work the agency emerge. The National Waterways Alliance, like the National Waterways Conference, has been chewing on these numbers for years and has a pretty good idea what they all mean. NWA believes that the total funding proposal of $4.871 billion is $458 million below fiscal 2006 and fiscal 2007 (expected) appropriations. The alliance believes that the proposed construction budget of $1.523 billion is 8811 million below expected fiscal 2007 appropriations and $823 million below fiscal 2006 levels.
No matter whom you talk to among river supporters, it is federal government pays far too little attention to the health of the waterways infrastructure. Rivers made possible the low-cost water transportation that helped make possible much of the growth of this nation. At the very least, navigation sped up that pretty much their opinion and it has been for years — that the growth and waterways served as a magnet to attract communities, many of which grew into large metropolitan areas.
During the World War II years, upwards of 4,000 vessels and other structures were built at Mississippi River-sited shipyards and moved to tidewater (Corps' figures from Backing Hard Into River History by the late James V. Swift). Today the Father of Waters and its subsidiaries facilitate transportation services that move both import and export cargoes from and to America's heartland. With properly maintained rivers and modernized navigation structures, there is no limit to the benefits that our river system can produce.
Back in the 1970s, the river industry was constantly forced to fight off user fee proposals. Finally they acquiesced in 1978 in order to hasten the construction of Mel Price Locks and Dam — a project the Carter administration had been holding hostage for years. The project, originally expected to cost $383 million, mushroomed to about $1.2 billion during the decade-long delay. And during all that time, the railroads were able to charge higher freight rates.
Rep. Johnson is right on target when she calls the administrations proposal penny-wise and pound-foolish. Administration after administration has opted to neglect the aging river infrastructure, much of which now is almost 50 years beyond its design life. Is it any wonder that operation and maintenance costs have gone up? Inflation alone would account for one portion of the surge. When we neglect a system long enough, we inevitably' have to pay the piper. As auto mechanics often say, "Pay me now for an oil change, or come in later and I can replace your whole engine."
Believe it or not, the piper is calling, the system is begging for help, and the budget proposal is bleak.
In the meantime, the Office of Management and Budget has for the second year proposed to transfer the funding of major rehabilitation projects and Endangered Species Act compliance from the construction budget to operations and maintenance. Because the Inland Waterways Trust Fund is expected to be down to $4 million by the end of fiscal 2008, the feds are toying with a new user fee (possibly locking fees) to help pay the bills. There's even talk of dropping the fuel tax, which is now 20 cents a gallon. If that were to be done, it would require a lockage fee of $115 per barge per lockage to make up more than $200 million in losses.
Lockage fees of that magnitude are apt to force cargo off the rivers and further overburden our rails and highways — at a much higher expense financially and environmentally.
Those households who use budget tactics akin to the U.S. government generally go bankrupt.
The problem in this case is that those who hold the purse strings do not have a healthy water transportation system as their goal. They have other fish to fry.