2010 Budget Rankles Waterways Council

Lockage fee, lower funding for civil works upset shippers, operators

The President’s budget for 2010 includes $5.125 billion for civil works by the Army Corps of Engineers on the nation’s inland waterway system. House and Senate lawmakers will begin marking up the proposal June 25.

 

That amount is $277 million less than the total enacted for 2009. And it comes along with a proposal for a new tax that users of locks and dams on the country’s river system find unfair and counterproductive.

Waterways Council Inc., the national public policy organization that includes shippers, carriers, ports and waterways advocacy groups, acknowledged that the amount of money the White House proposed to spend is the highest any administration has ever offered. But it’s not as much as the $5.4 billion the Congress ultimately agreed to last year.

 

The more serious problem for shippers and operators that use the Mississippi, Illinois and Ohio Rivers as their main thoroughfares for transporting goods is an idea originally brought up under the Bush administration. A lockage fee would charge for use of the infrastructure that makes navigation of the rivers, with their ever-changing depth, possible. The Corps’ budget for inland waterways primarily goes toward building and improving the locks.

 

“This lockage fee is an ill-conceived proposal that should be rejected by this Congress just as it was by the last Congress,” said Cornel J. Martin, WCI’s president and CEO.

“We are surprised and disappointed that the Corps of Engineers and the Obama administration would support a tax that will discourage the use of barge transportation, the most energy-efficient, environmentally-sound way to move bulk commodities,” Martin said.

 

WCI supports a government-industry initiative, now underway, to develop an improved project-delivery system and long-term capital plan for America’s inland waterways infrastructure.

 

(Source: Journal of Commerce)