The Waterways Jourrnal
January 19, 2004
Washington, D.C.-The recently created Waterways Council launched an all-out effort January 13 to make sure that public and private interests understand the importance of keeping this country's 25,000 miles of navigable waterways and their locks and dams in shape to handle millions of tons of freight each year.
Addressing a group of reporters at a luncheon in Washington, D.C., the council's president and chief executive officer, R. Barry Palmer, narrated a series of slides explaining the benefits and needs of the country's inland waterways.
As for the council, formed by merging Waterways Work! And DINAMO (the Association for the Development of Inland Navigation in America's Ohio Valley), its mission is to be "the national unifying association of America's numerous ports and inland navigation infrastructure interests, serving as the definitive spokesperson for the inland waterway system in Washington and around the country."
Specifically, Palmer said, the council "will work to ensure an optimal level of federal support and funding for the planning, construction, operation and maintenance of port and inland waterways navigation improvements of national importance and priority."
Emphasizing the needs of the inland waterways, literature distributed at the meeting showed that more than half of the 195 operational locks and 240 lock chambers in the United States, which handle more than 500 million tons of freight each year, will be over 50 years old and have outlived their economic design lives. The entire inland waterway system moves more than 1 billion tons of domestic commerce valued at $312 billion annually.
The replacement value of this country's lock and dam facilities has been estimated at more than $125 billion.
Palmer said that many locks currently in use are too small for today's larger tows. On the Upper Mississippi River, for instance, many lock chambers are 600 feet in length, while the average length of a modern tow (15 barges pushed by a towboat) is 1,200 feet.
Noting that there is money available to upgrade the infrastructure, Palmer said that about $400 million in private waterways industry dollars are in the Inland Waterways Trust Fund, which is funded by fuel taxes paid by waterways users, for infrastructure development and rehabilitation. At the rate that additional funds are being added, he said, annual expenditures for Trust Fund-financed major lock and dam improvements should be increased to $300 million for each of the next 10 years.
Since 1986, when the first Water Resources Development Act was passed, commercial inland navigation users have contributed about $1.6 billion to the Trust Fund, which pays for half the cost of new construction and major rehabilitation of locks and dams. The other half comes out of general revenue. Users contribute their share from the 20-cents-per-gallon diesel fuel tax.